19.03.17

As promised, starting a new game today. Night of Azure is that game, and it's got rather sad reviews on Steam already and a couple hours of playing mostly confirms what the reviews say.
For starters, the game doesn't even scale to 1080p, forcing me to play in either windowed mode or have stretched out pixels. Secondly, while I can play with a keyboard, nothing explains the controls to me, nor allows for rebinding them. The original keyboard controls are listed in some text file that comes with the installation, but they're pretty terrible. I'd need three hands, as I can't use the mouse for looking around.
There's a clear deficit of polygons, as is common for console games, the animations are noticeably robotic, and as far as I've gotten, the story is bad.
As for the game itself... It's pretty much a cycle between cutscenes and levels, with a break for equipping new stuff every now and then. Except the levels are boring, easy, and you just mash the attack key while awkwardly trying to handle movement and the camera, which are on opposite sides of the keyboard. (And the attack key is in the middle.) There's a lack in the variety of your equipment, and it practically changes nothing except for a small boost to your stats.
So, uh, yeah... Game's shit. Again.

Speaking of Action Anime RPGs, I wonder how Dragon Nest is doing. I never really liked it, judging it as an MMO, but as a singleplayer ARPG, it might even be pretty good. I might take a look at some point.

18.03.17

Oh crap, I've been lagging behind on posts by a day, but I'll start a new game tomorrow, I swear.

17.03.17

Turns out that with the slight change in the Steam reviews system, they also changed it to not show the score of any game with less than 10 reviews. It sort of makes sense because you can't really accurately decide from such a low amount of reviews, but they do help, especially the negative ones. Games with a low amount of reviews tend to have more positive ones, so each negative one speaks a lot about the game. That and the change also broke my script which I used to look through those games. Actually took me three days to notice that it hadn't given me any games to manually look through. Well, fixed now though.

And among those three days worth of games I found Streets of Rogue. It's apparently some sort of Early Access multiplayer roguelike with a ton of mechanics, but not (yet?) terribly much content. But it looks kind of interesting. Reminds me a bit of Monaco.

16.03.17

Well, I finished my HotS placements, placing in the same spot I was last season. At least the progress isn't backwards.

I also managed to relocate all my classes from Friday, so I have a three-day weekend now, which is nice. I've still a bit much on my plate right now, but I hope to get a few games over with on the weekend.

15.03.17

I found Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and-the-name-is-way-too-long... Didn't I just see another game by the same name (that spans like two whole lines) like a week back? Anyways, hey, it's another JRPG, and I've grown wary of those. Couldn't tell from the images, the video, nor the user reviews that it's severely lacking in certain aspects, and maybe it actually isn't, but I have my doubts at this point. Still, worth a try, right?

14.03.17

HotS' season is coming to an end really soon, so I spent the evening trying to rank up.

So, sorry, no new games. Maybe Thursday.

13.03.17

Sometimes I just mentally skip a day. I really don't have any recollection of what kept me so busy this Monday.

12.03.17

Started the day off with a few more hours of Tyranny. By my estimates, I'm maybe 20% through the game now, so I have a decent enough idea of it. And from what I hear, the ending is rushed/incomplete anyways.

I can't accurately compare it to Pillars of Eternity, since it's been a few months since I played the latter. It obviously shares all of the major mechanics and is all around very similar, but as far as gameplay and ease-of-use (UI, menu layouts, understanding what I'm supposed to do, etc.) go, I'd say there have been slight improvements.

Other than that, my opinions are the same as last time in that it's not inherently bad, but instead just not my style.

-Expects me to roleplay to some degree, to at least interact with the story, but I prefer to pick the most efficient route.

-It's darn hard to determine the most efficient route and that would turn the rate of progress into an unbearably slow slog.

-So I either dislike it because I am being suboptimal or I dislike it because it takes too long to do every little thing.

And adding to that, I don't really care much for the story, nor do I consider the combat to be fun or interesting.

Quick to be added, quick to be removed. As far as games go, The Mooseman was terrible. You just walk right and try to solve shitty puzzles. And it throws some myths and real-life lore at you real often. If I wanted to read this lore, I'd go do so somewhere outside a game. Although, this barely qualifies as a game.

Way of the Red was that one game I added to my list because I hadn't been adding enough games. That was back when I didn't have automation assisting me in filtering out the garbage from the Store. It actually turned out to be surprisingly good. Not quite worth recommending, but good nonetheless.
Way of the Red is a simple action platformer. Not sure if one could really classify it as a Metroidvania, but it's near there at least. Now, I don't particularly have anything bad to say about the game, but the majority of the components weren't good either. My biggest issue was with how wall-grabbing required you to press jump after you had made contact with a wall. If you were holding it down any sooner, it failed. But other than that, basic movement was actually above average, as it was really responsive and quick. I never felt frustration from the controls, only from my own incompetence (at times).
But the problem was that the game was only a few short hours long and lacked features. There wasn't any real quality in the art, story, or gameplay. It was all just barely sufficient to not be bad in any way, but I could never point to this game for doing something particularly well.
So, hey, if you're starved on Metroidvanias or the like, you can try this, it probably won't be a dislikeable few hours, but don't expect anything memorable either.

11.03.17

But I actually completed everything I had to do for next week, so I got the weekend free. Therefore, games.

So I played about 4 more hours of God Eater 2: Rage Burst, and I'm stopping here. My opinions from the first time still stand, and I won't much repeat them. I'm losing more and more hope in JRPGs, perhaps I'll one day actually be biased against them.

Right, but why am I stopping? Well, let's start with the less bad case - the story. It feeds you some bits of story here and there through cutscenes and optional dialogue. Most of the time, neither is particularly interesting, and at worst, they're cringeworthy. There's hints to an interesting overarching storyline, but ugh, the majority of it is garbage.

I would complain that forcing the not-so-good story down my throat at regular intervals is a bad thing, but sadly, compared to actually playing the game, I was looking forward to the occasional cutscene. The combat is really repetitive, enemies are either too easy or can soak up too much damage, and the hitboxes of their attacks are weird, meaning you basically just run up to them and hit them until they die, running to a safe distance if they start charging an attack you feel you don't want to risk tanking. No flashy dodging nor awesome combos, just hit, hit, and hit some more.

And the complicated equipment system? Shallow, sadly. I'd say at least 75% of it doesn't see any use. Now, which 75% might depend on who's playing, but for any single individual, the vast majority of the stuff you see is irrelevant.

All the environments are heavily re-used, tiny, but you still need to run tons to actually get from one fight to another. And the minimum downtime between two actual missions is huge, because you need to wait for like 40 seconds after each victory, then it lists you all the stuff you earned one-by-one, loading screens, head back to the mission terminal, back to the gate, more loading screens... Laughably little fighting.

Honestly, the first impression it gives is pretty good, but that quickly wears off and then it's just layers upon layers of bad. Each worse than the last and the next.

So instead I gave Tyranny a go. Looks extremely similar to Obsidian's last game - Pillars of Eternity, which I didn't end up liking. I'm about 3 hours in right now, and I'm slightly less bored, but by no means enthralled by it. The reason for the former might just be the ever-different circumstances and levels of boredom in my life, or maybe Tyranny does something slightly better than it's predecessor. Some optimistic estimate sets the playthrough time at 12 hours, but I highly doubt that's the case with my pace.

10.03.17

Doing stuff.

09.03.17

No time.

08.03.17

This is all the news you'll be getting for today, but two new games:

Desync is an FPS, where you... shoot enemies. Well, clearly I have my doubts about the depth of this game and how long it can be entertaining, but it looks colorful and action-y enough.

And the other is For The King. It's a turn-based RPG, and it seems everything is on a hex grid, from the battles to the world map. I really like how the game looks, but I hear it has some serious problems with the balancing of some mechanics. In any case, it's in Early Access, so at least for me, it has time to fix those issues.

07.03.17

Well, hope for more updates on some later date. Probably not tomorrow.

06.03.17

The more I think about it, adding possibly shitty games to my list isn't all that bad. If they're good, I lose nothing. If they're bad, I run them through another 2-minute check before playing anyways, so I get to second-guess any past decisions, should I feel the need. And even if I do try them, the bad ones don't last too long. I guess the quality of my choices has kept up with my expectations, else I'd be more picky with the games I choose.

That said, Weapon Shop Fantasy is listed as a casual game, and does look like something that might make for a mobile game. On the other hand, most mobile games are completely trashed by Steam users, so I'm hoping this isn't as bad. Not much need for descriptions what the game is about - the name pretty much says it all.

05.03.17

At least I finally got like 2 hours of "proper" free time just as the weekend was ending. I'll surely be showered with new problems the next week, but for now, I have time.

So I started with God Eater 2: Rage Burst. It's a little more anime-ish than I thought and it totally shows it's a console port. The graphics don't look all that old nor bad, but there's a distinct lack of polygons, and the control scheme isn't the best, but I don't have any major problems with it right now, and it's probably better than that of the average port.

The game seems incredibly complicated on the combat portion, to the point I don't really have a clue what I'm doing yet. I just hope it has the depth to match instead of eventually boiling down to a few strategies that work best, and then a ton of useless fluff. Sadly that does seem to often be the case with RPGs coming from the East. Same issue with poorly adjusted difficulty. I haven't really made it past the tutorial-y portions yet so I don't really know about either, but I hope those things won't be issues.

The game looks really cool in my opinion, and the weapon are about the most oversized I've seen. It lists my 2 meter sword as a knife. So if the combat ends up being more fun than tedious, I feel like I got another long game on my hands. For better or worse.

04.03.17

Okay, no, there's no way there's so many "passable" games being released as of late. I must just be getting more lenient with picking them.

But even now I'm feeling a sense of "Maybe it would have been fun." on some games I left out. Like a Guns of Icarus with actual ships at sea, or some physics-based ragdoll climber, or a side-view PvP shooter.

Okay, so, people probably heard about 911 Operator. It's kind of a management game where you send different emergency vehicles to places that need help, or something. Seems there are some other events that you might have to respond to as well. Eh, will see.

Then there's Hollow Knight - another metroidvania. I like how it looks. As for the gameplay side, seems pretty standard, but well polished? Again, will see once I hopefully ever get around to it.

And oh, hey, more knights. Hyper Knights seems like a much shorter game about using various combinations to execute attacks on little tiny knights or having your own army of little tiny knights fight the other ones. Seems fun for a short while, which seems to be kind of a trend with well received games these days.

Actually, about that last part. I did just realize that there are comparatively few (good) full-length or well-replayable games coming out. It's definitely harder to have a game be engaging for a longer period of time, but if I can't even pull double digits out of a game, I can't honestly recommend it as good. It's a semi-sad state of affairs where we're drifting towards this "lots of cheap games that will keep you entertained for a short while" mentality. I mean, if they continue being fun, then these short experiments, I dare say, are fine. But I'm afraid we might be leaning towards the mobile market where people might not want to pay large amounts of money for games, or expect to get a new game every couple of days. Here's me giving my vote to quality over quantity, always.

And, finally, I'd mention that that Codingame thing I was linked to was pretty fun. Got out of wood tier and into bronze at least. I have some more ideas for improvements, but considering it ends in a day and I still have other things to do, I'll leave it as it is. They supposedly have more competitions happening, so perhaps I can try again at some other time.

03.03.17

Work, work, work. The end is in sight though, so I have hope for getting some stuff done this weekend. Not much hope for reaching my goal though.

02.03.17

I'm really going to struggle reaching that goal I set for myself by the end of this weekend since I'm adding all these new games.

Right, so, Northgard released (into Early Access), which has been sitting in my wishlist for a fair while. I can't even remember why I originally added it, but it seems the reception so far is very good, unlike most Early Access games. The game looks quite pretty in both art and design too. It's an RTS, probably more like Age of Empires than Starcraft though. I do have a general distaste for RTS games, but that's mostly only if there's any form of multiplayer involved. Current complaints seem to be a lack of difficulty and meaningful content, but perhaps that'll get better over time.

Then there's Unexplored, which seems to be another randomly generated rogue-like. But apparently this one's actually decent, or something? I skipped over this when I first saw it, but it actually released now, and people seem to praise it for the good dungeon generation algorithm as well as the plethora of content.

And lastly, Open Sorcery, which seems to be shortest and simplest of the bunch. At first glance I thought it might be another coding game of sorts, but looking closer I guess it's just a text-based adventure. But it's also supposedly real short, so nothing lost either way.

Still, I need to really step up my pace and work through a large bunch of games this weekend if I want to stay on track. It doesn't help that I'm still busy and have a bunch of stuff I need to take care of if I want to enjoy a weekend free of responsibilities. A friend also recently pointed me to this, and a time-limited contest taking place there. Not that I'd want to seriously compete, but it seems like a fun thing to try. But that does add another thing that I need to do in the near future, and my imaginary schedule is overflowing already. I do hope to one day surmount my giant list of games, but I can't help but think if that's a false hope, and I'll instead be locked in an eternal struggle against them.

01.03.17

There's a terrible lack of time right now. Which is great because everything I'm doing feels really important, but obviously bad because I still don't have enough time to do everything.

A rather large group of potentially good new games in the Store today.

First up, Pixel Privateers. This is from the same group who made Pixel Piracy, I think, and plays somewhat similarly too. It looks like there's tons of new content and mechanics, and a multiplayer mode. The original Pixel Piracy was a flop in terms of execution, but it had decent ideas. Considering the reviews for this are relatively good, I have hopes it'll be enjoyable unlike its predecessor.

Next, Berserk and the Band of the Hawk. Ugh, I partially think the good reviews come from people liking the source material, not the game itself. I speculate I won't actually like it, but with how popular it is, I can't just not try it.

And finally, Night in the Woods. Some cartoon-y adventure game about... I don't know what. Again, looks like a game for a different target audience than me, but I have to try it. It's kind of the reason I play all these games even though I don't like >90% of them. They're often enough not a waste of time, and if I'm ever pleasantly surprised, it's worth all the times I haven't been.

I also finished watching Attack on Titan. Can't say it was the best I've seen, but it was still pretty darn great and the quality was consistent throughout.

28.02.17

Today I spent a tad more time than I care to admit on Dominus. It's a... slow-time strategy game, if you'll excuse my terminology, and it's actually quite fun.

It's a medieval-themed game where you mainly just build armies and send them to battle with other armies and take the castles of other players. If you take their castle, they become your vassal. Vassals stack like a tree, and any vassals under a player transfer with them. You can also rebel against your lords and make them your vassals if you win. So, eventually, everyone will be in a single vassal-lord tree, and then it becomes a game of who can stay at the root node of that tree (the lord of all) for two days. If you manage that, you win the game.

There's more depth to it than that, but it's still quite slow-paced, so by no means will you always have something to do. I wonder how much dedication it actually requires, as well as how bad things will get once you haven't tended to your lands over the night. I don't really have hope I'll play it for a longer while due to having to routinely attend to it, but it sure is fun for now. Stock market jokes are quite something right now.

27.02.17

Nothing much to report today.

But any day with nothing to report makes me reflect on why that was, and where I went wrong that that day was so uninteresting. So there's room for improvement.

26.02.17

I tried out Heavy Metal Machines with my friends today, and as a team of 3, we had a 90% win rate, with most games going 3-0 in our favor. Well, aside from it being too easy, it was a rather fun experience. The game didn't seem to have a lot of depth to it, so I would've probably gotten bored regardless of the high win rate, but dodging enemies, ramming opponents, trying to shoot them down or knock them into lava while trying to keep fire off your carry and them at full health... It's fun, really.

Basically you first rush to get the bomb from the middle, then try to carry it down the windy track to your opponent's finish line, or kill their carry and grab the bomb to push it backwards on your track. It's like a constant tug-of-war. There's a few different cars with the main types being healer, damage dealer, and bomb carry.

The entire game has a population of about 50-200 players, depending on the time of day, and connection issues are actually rather commonplace, even if it's not the players' fault, so you'll be dealing with at least one AFK in most games. So, due to the low depth, low player count, and high amount of connection problems, I don't think I'll be returning to it. But I did have fun.

25.02.17

The Mooseman looks like a fairly short adventure game that's perhaps again a bit more focused on how it looks and feels, rather than how it plays. But as usual, it seems worth trying, as there's not much time to be lost in any case.

Now, I also suddenly got access to the pre-alpha testing of Crowfall. It's apparently been two years since I backed this project on Kickstarter. It's also the first and so far only project I've backed so early. That is partially due to me having faith in them accomplishing what they said they would, and partially because I've been starved for a proper Sandbox MMO for far too long.
I wasn't actually expecting to get in yet, as the game is a long ways from being finished. A lot of the systems still need work and there's plenty of band-aids in place to even have this playable. I tried it for a few hours, and there's not much to really do yet. Couple that with the fact that mostly everything is going to change before launch and that there will be resets, and I'm not really inclined to spend all that much time in it beyond learning what can be done at present.
Currently there's combat and crafting. The former needs work from a client-server interaction standpoint at the very least, and the latter is just a game of crafting potions, which are a quick fix that give massive boosts to everything so we wouldn't be stuck in the low-level stuff. Much to test, not much to play.

24.02.17

Well, two games down, after a long period of relative inactivity.

I finally gave Shadow Tactics a try, and it went about as well as I predicted. It definitely looks like a good game, but the combination of genres simply doesn't appeal to me, so I gave up fairly quickly as it wasn't enjoyable. I guess my understanding of it all is a bit limited given my short playtime, but...

The stealth portion looks fairly standard and solidly executed. Lots of cover, cones of sight, noise circles, stealth kills, hiding the bodies, creating distractions, traps, etc... Getting seen is not instantly the end of everything, but it is a difficult situation to come out of, and by no means can you just switch to rushing the enemy.

And for the RTS side, well... It's just real-time at all times and features multiple characters whom you can control at once. And this is actually the bigger part of what I don't like. The game often requires or at least benefits from being able to simultaneously control two or more characters, but I don't feel like the strategic/tactical side mixes well with having to rapidly queue actions, which can fail if you're not fast enough or make a mistake due to rushing. The characters feel great if you can actually give any one of them your full attention, but since you often can't, they don't. It's not satisfying to see a mistimed action, and then scrambling to get your characters out, but instead someone sheepishly stands there or has been left in crouch mode and is slowly sneaking away while being shot at.

But I suppose that's more my general issue with RTS games. The stealth portion is decent, and I can't particularly say that the RTS side is poorly executed. So if you like both genres, you might enjoy it. I just don't think they mix well like this.

Another game I tried today was Valley. I apparently got about halfway through the thing, as it's only a few hours long, but as far as I heard, the last half is just more of the same. As you can guess, since I stopped halfway, I didn't like the game.
As I started, it appeared to be another one of those all graphics, no gameplay exploration games. The controls also felt a bit heavy or sluggish, and remained so throughout the game. I honestly had some hope as I was running at high speeds through the first map in the newly acquired suit, making long leaps, but that was about the highlight of the game for me, and it wasn't anything particularly good, just... passable. The rest was just "go there, do that, meet some invisible walls and how-am-I-supposed-to-get-over-this terrain along the way".
The life giving and taking mechanic of your suit is a pointless addition to the game, which only serves as an alternative to flipping switches, restricting mobility, penalizing deaths, and other game mechanics that they wanted to limit. There's more than enough energy everywhere and shooting stuff to revitalize it was just a chore. Not that the so-called exploration was any better.
So, yeah, that hope I got dwindled away real quick and it really was another one of those all graphics, no gameplay exploration games. The graphics are good though, I got to give them that, if only perhaps a little too shiny and blinding.

23.02.17

Found a little game by the name of Soul Searching. It probably has more depth in meaning than gameplay, as the latter doesn't look particularly good, yet it's noticeably well received so far. Onto the list it goes, for whenever I get around to it.

22.02.17

Oh hey, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force released on Steam. It's kind of from the Neptunia series, just skinned differently and has a more serious tune to it, which is all good in my eyes. I played through the original one and kind of liked it despite how glaringly bad the actual gameplay was, which I think I briefly mentioned when writing about Tales of Zestiria. So, Advent Dark Force is apparently just like the regular Fairy Fencer F, except with little improvements all across the board. New difficulty levels supposedly make the game not laughably easy, but don't turn the combat any less uninteresting. So I'd suggest this over the original if you want to play it and haven't yet, but I won't be going through it again.

21.02.17

Day 2 of not making progress toward my set goal.

I must be really bad at this. I was actually a bit busy with stuff that needed doing instead of wasting my time today though. Soon. Soon...

20.02.17

Day 1 of not making progress towards my set goal.

19.02.17

The day goes fast when spent on Factorio with friends.

I actually also played some Burnout Paradise. Not because it was on my list or anything, no. I've already played it a fair bit a few years back, but decided to spend a couple more hours on it for some odd reason. It has that good moment-to-moment action, but not much in terms of enjoyment after being done with it for the day. And I already have plenty of other games for the former.

I still have 111 games on my backlog as of right now. I want to get it down to <100 by two weeks' time. I need some arbitrary goals to motivate me, at the very least.

18.02.17

It's finally done. I wasn't sure this day would come. I finally finished that VN. And this is precisely the reason I'm reluctant to read them. They take an eternity to complete. I'll stick by my decision of not describing them for long, but it suits this one especially well. Any actual details would spoil it.

The House in Fata Morgana was a darn delightful read, and is now one of my favorites. It's highly different from all other VNs I know, not being anime-themed, among other things. It's a series of intricately woven tragedies, but that's as much as I'm allowed to say. Oh, also, the music is really good and a very important part in the overall feeling of the story.

Hey, perhaps I can finally play some other games now. Wouldn't that be a joy?

17.02.17

And hey, here's some rogue-like action game that I probably won't like, since I keep adding such mediocre stuff to my list as of late. Brut@l would be that game.

But hey, if the games really are bad, it won't take all too long to realize that when trying them. On a good day, I can go through 4-6 bad games. In contrast, my average over the last month must be more like 0.04 games/day. I'll try to fix that, I swear.

16.02.17

Okay, so, I'm both clearly biased towards anime, as well as selecting games below my average quality threshold at the moment. That said, the two following games still don't look all that bad.

Atelier Sophie and Nights of Azure are both seemingly similar JRPGs, although the former is noticeably more popular and better rated. I can't really see anything special about either at first glance, but I might enjoy them.

15.02.17

Wednesdays are days of lectures, classes, and art. So in terms of the writings here, nothing ever happens on a Wednesday.

14.02.17

I tend to forget what I do once a few days have passed. And with some days being consistently more busy, it's no wonder I don't have time on those days.

I think I mostly only got a little bit of Factorio done. I'm playing a scenario where each player is on some different part of the map and on a different faction so they don't share technologies nor do they see each other. With the resources not being terribly abundant and aliens being everywhere, this should hopefully eventually create some scenarios for trading, which would be fun.

13.02.17

Not much done today, but I do wish to draw your attention to this: https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom. It's a little odd for a Humble Bundle, being 30$ minimum, but the value on the entire pack is really darn good. Sadly(?) I already have most of the games I'd want from that bundle, but I think it has a lot of good games. It also has some books, which I know nothing about.

Here's some of the ones I've liked: The Stanley Parable, Mini Metro, Invisible Inc., 2064: Read Only Memories, Super Meat Boy, The Witness, Nuclear Throne, VVVVVV, World of Goo, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.

12.02.17

Truth be told, I haven't been checking Steam's store for the past 9 days. But I took the couple of hours needed to finish the entire automatic checking thing, so that scenario shouldn't happen again. But couple that with not having much variety in the games I've been playing for, gosh, perhaps a month now, and you get the same effect as going to a store on an empty stomach. So I ended up picking 6 games from the store that I'll try.

Starting off with Warcube. It's apparently some super early version, but the graphics and gameplay look simply lovely. Hard to say if it's going to play good, but it certainly looks good both in motion and while still.

Next up, Linelight. I don't normally try these minimalistic puzzle games (also because there's oddly many of them) that Steam's userbase has branded as casual, but this one looks a bit more polished and I've heard about it from other places too.

Now, one simply because it's free, Heavy Metal Machines. Some odd 4v4 combat racing game, but I don't think I'll stick with it for longer than perhaps a couple of hours.

This one I haven't the slightest how to pronounce, but... Rosenkreuzstilette. It, uh, reminds me of Megaman, as much as I've played the latter. Judging from the graphics, I would guess it's >10 years old, but nope, completely fresh.

And continuing in the same vein, because I do like these kinds of games a tad more than most, Alwa's Awakening. I suspect this, as well as the previous one, aren't all too long. At least I hope they aren't. They don't look like they could sustain over a dozen hours of play, and even half of that length would seem to be too much.

And finally a choice-based story-focused game. A House of Many Doors looks like a type of game I haven't played in a while. Not that I'd have a particular liking for choice-based games, but I don't think it's a bad genre either. Mainly hoping to remind myself how those kinds of games play.

11.02.17

Like, really too much HotS, what am I even doing with my free time, I have things that need do be done. I've been hanging in Diamond 4 for a while now, as opposed to going between 5 and 4, so it's some improvement, I suppose.

I also played something by the name of Ultimate Chicken Horse at a... uh... place. It's a fun party game, sure, but not really my style, and I wouldn't play it if I got to pick the game, so I don't really have much I'd want to say about it.

10.02.17

More HotS. I also almost finished Fata Morgana, for real this time. I'll write a few lines about it when I do. Mostly just too much HotS though.

09.02.17

How the days fly. I suppose it's a welcome change, but I do slightly miss the free time.

I tried the For Honor beta, and honestly the server issues with the entire thing were just abhorrent. It appears to have plenty of depth, but I couldn't really get a good feel of the combat due to the combination of it being on the complicated side as well as not having the willpower to trudge through the constant disconnects and long load and matchmaking times.

Might see how it does at launch, but I'm still more waiting for Absolver, since Blade Symphony doesn't appear to be livening up ever again.

08.02.17

I have nothing on-topic to share, so here's something that's not. I took a digital painting course. And it makes me feel like I'm complete shit. If that ever happens to you with anything you do, remember that someone, somewhere, is worse. Doesn't excuse you from being a complete shit though. ;_;

07.02.17

I'll just mention that the For Honor Open Beta will be beginning on the 9th, so I'll definitely play a lot of that over the weekend. It's a good chance to try the game for a few days without having to buy it. Personally, I think it looks pretty good, reminding me of Blade Symphony quite a lot. (I really liked Blade Symphony, but there's nobody there anymore.) It's of course a lot less fancy, but hopefully the balance is decent, and it most definitely has plenty of players for now. I can only hope it stays that way.

06.02.17

And then a new semester, the first week of which is always a little hectic. I actually took a (small) class relating to game development. It's about program design patterns, but especially from a game developer's stand point. So, uh, slowly working in various ways towards becoming a game developer some day. Now if only I spent some of my free time on that instead of playing games, I might get there faster.

05.02.17

But on others, I was playing Factorio with my friends again. Shocking they've time for games so often in the past ~month. Have I mentioned how much I like Factorio? With just a tiny bit of hyperbole, it's the best thing ever. Seriously.

04.02.17

I honestly forget what kept me so occupied some of these days.

(But here, have a few paragraphs I wrote, but never published. They relate to the post two days ago, but were written a good 1-2 weeks before that.)

I've already slightly ranted about this, and it might just be my current state of feeling tired, but there are way too many games being released on Steam.

Looking up some of the statistics, apparently over a third of all the games currently on Steam were added there this year. And the percentage of rubbish continues to increase. Day after day, the vast majority of games I sift through have, by my estimates, been made in under 100 hours solo, or under 200 combined hours as a group. In other words, probably not more than a week or two's worth of work. It's sickening, and there is literally even a company that brags about how they release a game every single day.

Shifting through ~200 games every week only to find 2 at best... it's demoralizing. I just don't feel like it's a good use of my time to thoroughly consider each of these games, so I already preemptively judge them based on the amount of reviews, the positivity of them, as well as what the game looks like in the first few seconds.

03.02.17

The Steam store feels like it hasn't felt for perhaps about even a year now. It's a lot more pleasant to look through games if they actually seem interesting, although I'm as picky as ever. Perhaps that has to do with my slow progress of clearing my backlog as of late. In any case...

I wasn't expecting to like it, but it was free, and I felt like trying it. Guild Quest, that is. Well, it's an idle game, not even a clicker, and it's not a good idle game either. So, I didn't like it, but 30 minutes isn't much lost.

Then there's Tales of Berseria, which seems to be one of the more popular releases as of late. Seems the release went rather well, and people are saying that the bad combat and equipment system from Tales of Zestiria have been "fixed". With how long and grindy these are (or seem to be, I haven't really played all that much to accurately know), I don't think I'd have the patience to finish both at this point. So I'm ditching Zestiria, and will at some point play this instead. If it turns out to be much to my liking, I might go back to play the previous one too.

And finally, Avorion, which I don't really know much about. It seems to be some kind of Space Sandbox, but I can't quite grasp the main "point" of it from just briefly looking at it. Regardless, it seems plenty popular and liked, so I guess I'll try it.

02.02.17

If this continues, I might just switch to a lower-frequency update schedule. Maybe thrice a week or something like that. Although there's no guarantee that I wouldn't miss those updates then as well. I hope this is just a phase of relative inactivity.

I actually spent the majority of today working on that program that would browse Steam's new releases for me. I'm not particularly experienced with making stuff that communicates with other stuff, so it took rather long. Not to mention I had to figure out how to automatically bypass age and mature content restrictions, as well as deal with a bunch of exception cases. In the end, I got it working (for the time being at least), and all that's left is to automatically mark certain games as "Not Interested".

It's not too aggressive with the filtering, only weeding out about 60% of the games. I manually looked over the batch of ~200 games it decided were not worthy of my attention, and not a single one of those was something I, myself, would have considered either, so I think it's doing a good job. And the rest that it did choose for me to look over were of much better quality. Having not gone over the new releases for about a week now, I should have some new games listed in the next post.

It also does some very minor logging on the amount of games released as well as the average score my program gives to the games on that day. It's more for the sake of fun than anything else though.

01.02.17

It's been another two days, hasn't it?

31.01.17

If I tackle multiple games at once that I don't really wish to play for extended periods of time, things start dragging on. Like how I'm still both playing Shenzhen and reading a lengthy VN, and most of my day goes on something other than those two regardless. Problem is that if I take another game to play beside those, it's increasingly more likely one of them will slip out of my schedule entirely.

So those situations take weeks during which I'm not getting much done in terms of new games. Luckily a friend finally had time to come over so we could play some local co-op games, two of which I'll tell you about.

Starting off with N++. I'm slightly conflicted about it. On one hand, I can't say I didn't have fun, but on the other, I don't particularly like platformers. Perhaps N++ is all that more commendable then, for making me have fun on a genre I don't particularly enjoy. Although I don't at all wish to go back to completed levels to get a better score or any such stuff, which it seems this game is quite much about.

N++ is very similar to Super Meat Boy in a lot of ways which include, but are not limited to, difficulty, speed, enjoyability, and silliness. While I don't really want to go back to it after about 6 hours, I would still say it's a very well made game, and would highly recommend it to anyone who does, unlike me, like action platformers.

The other one was Tales of Zestiria. Now this one I'm a lot less sure about. The most painful thing I had to find out was that this isn't really worth the co-op label. 11 hours in, and an agonizingly large portion of that is a complete singleplayer experience. I feel sorry for anyone who got 4 people together to play it, hearing it supports that many players, only to have 3 of them quit one by one because the game keeps lowering the amount of characters you can play. It's also terribly inconsistent in how many people can play at the same time. You start off with two, then get a third, then either of them is missing most of the time, then you gain the ability to merge two of them into one which means the other player has to constantly play the third, now uselessly weak, character, and in the case they go missing, it turns into a singleplayer game again. And then you get a fourth and fifth character in your party, but you must apparently have 2 "human" party members for two actual people to play at the same time. I mean I half understand a character leaving the party for story reasons, but ffs if I have 4 characters in my party, why won't you let two people play at once and rather leave some characters sitting idle?

Too lengthy of a rant, but that really did irk me. And while I'm on the negatives side, the battle camera is downright broken in how nearly unusable it is, often leaving my character not within its boundaries or close enough to an edge that I can't see what I'm fighting. Also it sometimes zooms in so that the entire camera view is is obscured by a single monster.

Now, what weren't completely terrible were the battle and equipment mechanics. There's a lot of depth and complexity to them, to the point where it's downright difficult to comprehend even after it's been explained to you by a tutorial. The problem is that it doesn't really warrant such complexity. Basically, a lot of the things you can do, you don't really want to. It doesn't help that there's like 20 different attacks, and that you chain them into combos and to elaborate mid-combo switches and effect stacking or whatever. Reason being that there's still only just a few that you'd actually use, and then you just stick to spamming those until the rare case something better comes along. Oddly enough, basically the same applies to equipment.

I guess that's been my overall experience with the gameplay side of all JRPGs so far, and it's really leaving a negative impression on me. That said, comparing it to games in the Neptunia series, I feel it's better in pretty much all the aspects, from difficulty scaling and combat to story and visuals.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to finish it, or perhaps instead try the very fresh Tales of Berseria instead. Why I'd bother at all in spite of the honestly not-very-enjoyable gameplay is because it feels kind of relaxing. The story is fun to follow, and beating up lots of enemies is kind of cathartic. I don't even care that the story is neither thought-provoking nor deep, and that the combat isn't challenging nor elaborate. These are not serious games, and I'm not taking them as such.

30.01.17

I spent most of today working on something to help me with the ever-increasingly time consuming task of looking through all of Steam's new releases. I'm already not handling the influx of utter shit (I'm sorry, but the quality really has nosedived.) that is being released on Steam, so I'm going to spend a little less time looking at those that are in all likelihood not worth anything, so I could spend a little more time looking over those that have at least a tiny bit of hope.

I'm not 100% sure I'll finish this as I've run into some problems, but I think they're surmountable.

29.01.17

Had a relatively rare opportunity to continue the game of Divinity I've been playing over nearly half a year now. 62 hours in apparently, and I'm surprised I haven't gotten bored in the slightest. Highlight of the session for me must've been when I finally got my Master level spells and unleashed my first Meteor Shower. The explosions and fiery death were quite something. òᴗó

28.01.17

I'm starting to think I'm playing a MOBA slightly too much again. I was afraid it would happen, which is one of the reasons why I didn't want to pick one back up.

There's this constant struggle between instant satisfaction and long-term satisfaction. Generally the things that are the most fun at a given moment don't offer much over a longer period of time, while things that may be tedious or boring have much more satisfying effects further down. As examples:

• MOBAs have moment-to-moment action where every move could be decisive, which constantly keeps things exciting and on-edge. However once a match is over, you start from scratch. Worse still, looking back at that time spent, it's not very unique, which makes it less memorable. So if you spend an entire weekend playing, the weekend will feel wasted on Monday because you lack distinct memories which are needed to create the feeling that the events happened over a lengthy period of time.
• Then there's games you can complete from start to finish, which may not be as exciting when playing them, but they often leave you with a story or some new experiences or ideas. This of course very much varies depending on which genre or specific game you're playing, but they generally create a larger feeling of accomplishment once you're through. And looking back at them, maybe you'll feel like you've learned something along the way.
• And as far as games go, I guess the other end of the spectrum would be games like EVE. It's actually a semi-solid argument to ask why people are spending their time in a game such as that rather than doing some or any kind of work in real life, but over the course of days, weeks, or even months, the stories and tales that come together are really something different. Looking back at them, it's not just some experience or idea you've gained, it's often a story worth sharing. But comparing the moment-to-moment gameplay? It's completely dull and uninteresting.
• And stepping outside of playing games, I'd say the worst of all is learning. It's tedious, frustrating when you just can't seem to grasp something, and you're not producing anything in the process of learning. No matter how much you learn, you never have anything to show that actually represents how much you've gained. Only when you exert extra effort to further use that gained knowledge to create something can you really see the fruits of your labor. But that is definitely a great feeling. Because I'm sure you've looked at a drawing and thought "I wish I could draw that well." And the same goes for everything, from art to technology. Who wouldn't want to know how to make things, or understand precisely how they work? But the road to each of these is a struggle.

27.01.17

A few more Shenzhen puzzles complete, some more HotS, got the neverending siege bug again on Endless Legend so I quit that playthrough, and some of Steam's features appear to be down, like the search/browse function, so I can't check for games today...
Overall nothing particularly noteworthy.

26.01.17

Can't believe I spent the entire day on Endless Legend. Same settings as last time, but it's going much better. One of my cities got the oddest bug where it remained under siege even after the opponent was gone. So I had to suffer a setback in productivity while I withdrew my armies and let the AI capture it, so I could get it back, and have it free from the siege. I'm actually trapped on an island for the time being, as I have not researched any naval units, and the enemy is in full control of the sea. While I'd love to get some, all the new researches are so much more profitable, I can't possibly give them up. This ties back to my opinion that there should be more required technologies before each next era.

25.01.17

I'd question if a post a day is too frequent, but then I remind myself Twitter is a thing. I'm probably fine.

In other news, I'm upset at HotS for refusing to reconnect me after losing my internet for literally 10 seconds, then also giving me the leaver penalty, not allowing me to play Draft Mode until I properly complete a few games.

So instead I tried a 1v1 Endless Legend game on the hardest difficulty. Apparently trying to explode your economy is only a viable strategy if you realize when the opponent is going to attack. I was caught off guard, and by the time I managed to get my defenses up, only my capital was left. The loss was inevitable, but I had fun repelling siege after siege with just one hero, a few militia, and a couple of infantry. Must've taken down about 40 units before they finally attacked me with a Guardian who just one-shot my units. I'm so not used to these DLC.

24.01.17

Oh shit. Forgetting to post anything for two days is a clear indication this is falling behind in my subconscious priority list.

Or that I don't really have much to write about.

23.01.17

More of the same as yesterday. I feel like I want to do something new, but I also don't wish to forsake the things I have yet to complete at this point.

22.01.17

No new games to speak of, but I did complete another level of Shenzhen, finish my placement matches in HotS (Diamond 3, yay?), finish, but not complete, another game of Endless Legend, and then another chapter of The House in Fata Morgana. (The latter nearly completely bores me, but then the ending of each chapter turns pretty great. Arguably worth it...)

21.01.17

Endless Legend and all its DLC are on probably the biggest sale they've been. I speculate the cause is that Endless Space 2 is coming along nicely, and they've finally finished adding stuff to Endless Legend. In any case, I think it's a wonderful game, and I used this opportunity to play it in multiplayer with all the possibly-wonderful DLCs.

The one thing I feel definitely got worse with DLCs though is the research "tree". The amount of technologies you have to research for each next level is too low in comparison to how many technologies there actually are so it creates moderately painful situations where you have to choose which technologies you're going to leave behind. Bumping it up to 10 or 12 might make for a more enjoyable experience. But hey, it actually has workshop support so if I'm feeling particularly productive, I can do that.

20.01.17

Okay, potentially getting back on track now, starting out with this:
Pit People. It's a strategy RPG by the people who made Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater, and looks to be very much in the same vein of silliness. So far it's been very positively received, so I'm going to try it out (at some point). In truth, however, I'm afraid that while entertaining and... different?, it won't be that good gameplay-wise, as I've thought the case to be with their other games.

19.01.17

But instead, I realized Heroes of the Storm is pretty good, still.

18.01.17

The truth is that I didn't really spend all my time studying.

17.01.17

Exam (luckily the last in a while) on Friday, which is rather demoralizing, and on which I blame the fact that I didn't really do anything today. Two more days of this, then I'll get back to doing stuff, swear.
I should probably think of filler content for these occasions, but I haven't any ideas.

16.01.17

Today kind of disappeared somewhere.
And I fear that that won't improve until Friday.

15.01.17

Another rather rare occasion of getting a few of my friends to both have free time at the same time, and to play a game together. So more Factorio it was.

We finished with launching a rocket, which was actually the first time I've not gotten bored of the game before reaching that point and starting over.

But really, it's a questionable decision to even add a "The end" screen or some final goal to sandbox games. It's been long since I forsook Minecraft, but I remember my disbelief when they added a victory condition to the game.

I guess it's more acceptable for a game that started out with one, as opposed to one that was doing fine without it, since "that's not what the game is about". On one hand it adds a goal to strive for - many people find a lack of reason to play a game if they have no concrete goal to reach, since they're not good at or not used to making their on goals. On the other, it gives all that much more reason to stop playing a game once you do accomplish that goal, while if you're already used to setting your own goals, you could always go further.

14.01.17

I took advantage of HotS' free Hero weekend for a bunch of hours today, encompassing half of my activities today.
The other half was spent on The House in Fata Morgana, which is a rather dark and non-standard VN.
And well, that's about it.

13.01.17

So I played some various games with my friend, among them also Art of War: Red Tides. It's a lane pusher in a rather literal sense. It consists of only one lane and a bunch of units running down that lane to fight against the opponent who's doing the same, but instead of controlling the units, you're the one who spawns them.

And from that description, I can already get to the flaws I saw in it:

Since 90% of the "work" is done by the AI, it is unacceptable that this AI is, in fact, pretty bad at controlling your units.

It doesn't appeal to a lot of people because you really essentially don't do anything. Picking the spawns takes seconds, and while you could spend the rest of the time thinking about good counter strategies, it doesn't really feel too exciting. But maybe I'm wrong and you do just like to watch the units battle each other.

I can not confirm this, but I hear the balance isn't all too great, where some strategies aren't always counterable, depending on the army build-up you selected when the game begun. Also that some units are nigh useless, and some units are almost universally a good pick.

But the positive sides, as far as I can see, are that the game's not dead, it's not pay-to-win (although it does take some grinding to unlock new unit types), and it looks pretty okay, since you'll be doing a lot of idle watching.

I didn't personally enjoy it, mainly due to the fact that I prefer to be constantly doing things, but for the nonexistent price of free, it might be worth checking out if its description even slightly interested you.

12.01.17

I question my decision to pick yet another programming game instead of funneling that effort of solving puzzles into actually making something myself, but MHRD looks like an interesting thing to try. Sometime after I finish Shenzhen, perhaps.

11.01.17

Ugh, exams, sanity, not forgetting to update this...

I'll just mention that you'd probably want to check out this Humble Bundle. EBF4 and Pony Island for "pay what you want". Deadbolt (which in my opinion wasn't as good as the others I've named here, but still decent) for "over the average", and VA-11 Hall-A and N++ for 10$ or more. (Neither of which I've played yet, but they seem like something I'd quite enjoy.)

I have not played nor am I planning to play Shantae nor Day of the Tentacle, but considering all of these games, as the bundle's name states, are Overwhelmingly Positively rated on Steam, I'd say they're all both very popular and almost unanimously liked by everyone who did try them.

There's also more games to be added to the "over the average" tier in less than a week now, so there's more value to be had.

10.01.17

Finished that river thing in KSP, went for a trip around the world, ran out of fuel halfway across the ocean, couldn't even land in the water properly because I had broken two tail fins on a landing earlier. Everyone died horribly. 'bout what I expected.

Also a couple of hours of Planetside and HotS, but I do at least one of those on most days, so it's not worth mentioning. I'd like to roll a new game, but I can't in good conscience do that with an exam in 3 days.

09.01.17

(Click to enlarge)

No new game today. Instead I spent some time in KSP, completing this week's Reddit challenge (SSTO spaceplane to stable orbit in less than 3:30), and since I was already making planes, I also made one that can refuel from mining, and decided to take a flight along the longest river on Kerbin. (It's incredibly long and after flying for around two hours, I might be about half done.) Here's a picture of that. --->

08.01.17

A game a day seems like a steady pace. At least when said game isn't too long or I'm going to quit halfway.

So today's game was Concrete Jungle. I played it for a good few hours, and had fun while I did, but the fun doesn't last very long. It's a puzzle game skinned as a city builder, where you place tiles that give bonuses (or penalties) to adjacent tiles, and then some tiles to collect those points. Meet a score goal for each row, sprinkle some slight special mechanics here and there, add deck building and card unlocks as a progression system, and that's basically the game. It sounds simple, it is rather simple, and therefore doesn't entertain for all too long before the "new" stuff is just a repetition of the old stuff.

So I'd say it's fun for a few hours. Definitely not a repetition of ideas I've already seen in a lot of games, and while they don't make for a great new game, I'd give it some points for the relative originality.

07.01.17

Tried Dungeon Souls, which seems to be a rather average action-roguelike. It could have been interesting for longer than an hour or so, but there have been a lot of games from that genre over the last years, so one would really have to bring something new or extremely well-made to the table to keep my attention anymore.

So while I can't say anything particularly bad about this game, there's probably a better alternative for anyone out there.

06.01.17

Hey there, I'm back! Back to one post a day that is. I have exams precisely a week and two from now on, but other than that, I have all the free time in the world for a month, so hopefully I can get a bunch of games done with.

Today's attempt went on Ara Fell, which, as far as I saw from my nearly 2 hour attempt, is quite a standard RPGMaker game. Not actually made in that though, but they all look the same.

I'm honestly not sure why this was slightly more popular than most others of its kind, because it played very similarly. Lots of dialogue, slow pace, shallow combat, and a story that wasn't bad, but not particularly gripping in any way either.

So unless you really like playing these simple kinds of RPGs, it's not worth trying.

Holiday Break

Since I don't wish every other post to be "Didn't do anything today." I'll keep updating this post with some little things I've done and found, but I'm generally spending the time with my family and friends.

Also, Steam's Winter Sale begins on the 22nd, and alongside it the Steam Awards voting.

Games played:

• Planetside 2 - Still as good, pointless, and grindy as ever.
• Pillars of Eternity - I played this for about 4 hours, and while I have nothing inherently bad to say about it, I guess it's just my personal preferences that caused me not to like it.
  My main problem would be that it's highly complicated. Sure, the complexity adds depth, and this seems to really be a RPG in the sense that you shouldn't always try to take the "best" and easiest route, but this is not really how I've learned to play games. With so many factors to consider, I could either bore myself with trying to find the more optimal combinations, or disregard them and take the first option that seems both reasonably good and fitting to the story I'm weaving. (As I assume the game intends I do the first times.) But again, that's not how I play games.
  Further, neither the lore nor combat gripped me, and it seems that even later on it's mostly just "hit stuff until something dies". And to my friends, from whom I got this as a birthday gift, sorry I didn't like it.
• Paragon - Checked in a few months after leaving because the game was being overly simplified and the developers were impossibly incompetent with balancing some things. To my utter surprise, it had actually gotten worse, so I'm probably not going to give it another chance.
• Heroes of the Storm - Well, this still helps me remember why I don't like team-and-round-based PvP, but it's decent enough that I played it for a while. I'm actually quite happy with the direction of the updates that have been made in the year I was absent, aside from the fact that ~70% of the new heroes are Assassins.
• Long Live the Queen - Did one more playthrough, and I'm still amazed at how many different paths there are. If I don't resort to guides, there's content for another 20 hours easily.
• Typoman: Revised - So, this is a puzzle platformer with a theme of the world being composed of letters. The concept's nothing special, really. Platforming is quite standard, and the puzzles seem to mainly be figuring out in which way you should rearrange the letters given to you each scene.
  And well, it's nothing good either. In addition to there being nothing special about the platforming, the implementation of it is below average. Your character feels unresponsive and it's difficult to say where exactly you can stand. The puzzles aren't all that well thought through, as it's often unclear why the intended word is correct, while the one you made is not.
  So, in conclusion, I don't see much of a reason to play it, and I quit fairly quickly after one of the puzzles bugged out due to me dying at a wrong time.
• And also a little bit of the following: Nord Invasion, Mini Metro, Prismata

Other:
Death Note - First half was amazing. Other half was rather bad in comparison. Still good overall.
Saya no Uta - Don't even look this up. I trusted vndb's popularity ratings and thought this was a good read. Big mistake.

Games found:
Astroneer - Already very well known, but launched just a week ago. Looks like it doesn't have much content yet but people like the style.
Art of War: Red Tides - Seems to be a 3v3 PvP game that looks like an RTS, except it's a lane pusher where players choose the composition of their waves at the beginning of each wave. It's F2P, so I guess it can't hurt to try.

19.12.16

Streamed like 8 hours of Civilization VI today. I promised I'd finish the game, but darn do some of the new features annoy me.

Let's start with the fact that the minimum distance between two cities is still 3 tiles. While I felt that was a tad low, it wasn't too outrageous in the previous installment. Now, however, every single district and wonder consumes a tile, which leaves oh-so-little space for regular tile improvements.

Now, add to that that the districts and wonders nearly always want to be on or next to some specific tiles and other districts and that you can't remove these once built, and you're left with either frustration at misplaced buildings, or having to plan all the buildings you'll ever potentially construct right at the beginning of the game.

Further, the decisions between keeping those great tiles that are producing you lots of resources, or instead putting wonders or districts over them are not pleasant ones to make. Do they add strategical complexity and/or diversity? Maybe. Are they fun? Not at all. And I'd say that's the case with the entire build-your-buildings-on-the-actual-hex-grid system.

Endless Legend (which currently holds the spot of my favorite TBS) does this district stuff much better, although that is due to the restriction of one city per (fairly large) area and because most tiles don't actually have any upgrades to be constructed on them.

Other than that, Civ's UI is still annoying, but that's a problem that can be fixed with relative ease in comparison to the problems mentioned above, which may just plague the entire installment forever.

18.12.16

Finally got around to trying some Obduction. It's about what I expected - Move around, click stuff, experience story, move around more and click more stuff to experience more story. There was also an abundance of dedication to the visual side of the game, with graphics settings ranging to, uh, very high values, and the space bar being bound to taking screenshots.

I'm not sure if it's a good game for people who actually like these kinds of games because I don't understand what they see in these. Definitely not my cup of tea though, and I don't know why I ever thought this was a good idea.

Other than that, a few more hours of Factorio, and then a few hours trying out the alpha of Breakaway.

Breakaway is Amazon's (yes, they have people making games now) new MOBA, which plays kind of like a mix of Paragon and basketball. Hit people, carry the ball to the opponents' base, buy some items, build buildings. Familiar concepts in a not-so-familiar combination. And while the idea's not bad, I would say the game is.
The game feels both too fast and too slow at the same time. Once you get moving, you're pretty fast, but anything that hits you stuns you for a brief moment. Stack those brief moments, and you're very quickly stun-locked.
So it feels kind of frustrating to be on the receiving side of damage, but it also feels rather frustrating to be the one attacking. Attacks are slow, and you're forced to stand still while attacking. Projectiles also have a pretty slow travel speed, so those players just zip past and you miss a lot, if not most, of your attacks and abilities.
Possibly something that gets better as players gain experience, but too many games were won by just some guy juking attacks and carrying the ball alone, possibly while the rest of the team kept the opposition mostly stun-locked. I also saw two cases of a bot being awarded MVP, and that probably says something bad about the game.

So I won't be trying it out during any of the next tests, should they occur, unless I hear it's gotten tremendously better. It's just an exercise in frustration right now, with an occasional laugh about how stupid some scenarios that happen are. Maybe the other two of Amazon's game projects will fare better.

Possibly starting an extended game of Civilization VI as the next game. While I've played it a little, I haven't really gotten a feel for the whole game, and I've never really played it up to the very end. I'll try to this time, no matter if I get bored mid-way.
But since the holidays are approaching, it might mess with the timings of that.

17.12.16

It's been forever since I got my friends to play anything with me, so after having mostly completed out exams for the time period until New Year's, we spent several hours on Factorio.

16.12.16

OneShot is a game that appeared on Steam some while ago. It wasn't released nor even in early access at that time, but it caught my eye for some reason and I put it on my wishlist regardless. Then I forgot about it. Fast forward until a week ago and Steam notifies me that a game on my wishlist released. And now, one week after the release, as per usual for when I pre-evaluate games, it looks decent enough that I'll want to play it. It's tagged as a casual adventure, but it's much more well received than the usual RPGMaker game, so I have hope it'll be good.

15.12.16

Nothing but exams and per-preparation for the next semester. Maybe games again tomorrow, but no promises.

14.12.16

Nope, nothing today, sorry.

13.12.16

Has it really been 2 weeks since I added the last game to my list? Well, in any case Shadow Tactics is some sort of real-time tactical stealth game, which is a combination that makes me skeptical, as neither RTSes nor stealth games appeal too much to me, but I'll probably at least give it a try someday, as it's very well received so far.

Also, I don't remember adding it to my log, but apparently I had Obduction on there. Exploration? Puzzle? Sci-fi? I'm skeptical already, but since I once thought I might want to play this, I'll honor my past judgement. Expect something tomorrow.

12.12.16

Oh how the days blur past in these rushed hours...
A couple more Shenzhen puzzles completed, but otherwise nothing noteworthy.

11.12.16

Too many hours of serious thinking in a row make my head hurt for obvious reasons, so I'll play some non-thinking-oriented games in parallel.

Gave Heart&Slash a brief 30 minute try, and it wasn't any good. It's a 3D hack-and-slash game, but both the audiovisuals and the gameplay were on the poor side. It's not flat out terrible in any way (running aside, I literally thought my game was glitched by how fast I was moving, and then they told me there was a sprint button...), but rather bad than good in all the ways.

So, no.

10.12.16

Well, tried participating in Ludum Dare for 6 hours, and reached a conclusion that given the amount of time I have this weekend, the speed at which I can make stuff, and the bare minimum I dare call a game, I wouldn't manage to make a game by tomorrow night.

I really need to familiarize myself with Unity (or some other game engine, but I feel like sticking with Unity for the time being) more. Not being in the middle of my exam period would also be nice.

So instead of practicing making games, I'll continue to waste my time on playing them. I really like Shenzhen I/O so far. It basically feels like TIS-100, in that, aside from hooking different parts up, all you do is write pseudo-assembly code. But it's a huge improvement, because it adds a bunch of nifty little additions you can hook up to one-another, which, together, give oh-so-many possibilities, from music players to touch screen games.

Actually, I'm not sure if I'd even bother writing my concluding thoughts when or if I finish this game. There's not much to talk about, as the game's very straightforward in what it is. You're given a manual. You're given a bunch of different parts. You're given a task. Read the documentation on how to handle the I/O on those parts, connect them, and write the code to complete the task, then move on to the next task.

The quality of the puzzles, as well as the rest of the game is great. If you like solving coding puzzles on a highly limited instruction-set, -amount, and memory, as well as spending a bunch of time thinking, not doing, then this game is great. I do, so I really like it, and I might eventually post any fun things I manage to make in the game's sandbox.

09.12.16

And once again I find myself conflicted between adding too many games for myself to try out or potentially missing something I'd like. And as usual lately, I've taken the second path. Hopefully one day I will actually complete my backlog and can try out new games as they come out, without worry of not being able to play them all...

In any case, Dungeon Souls released, which has been on my list for a while.

I also reinstalled Heroes of the Storm and Paragon, despite my better judgement. I'm telling myself I won't play them, but honestly, I don't know. Not yet, at least.

Instead, I went to play Shenzhen I/O. It's funny, really. Not the game, but that between playing games and programming for schoolwork, I also program games, and program in games. Will update on how Shenzhen is though.

08.12.16

Nope, nothing today.

07.12.16

I haven't forgotten to search Steam's new releases. But there really has been nothing noteworthy in the past while. I'm not really complaining, because my backlog will last me a metaphorical infinity, and it's nice to know it's not growing while I can't be there to trim it down.

And even though I should have perhaps done other things, I finished ICEY this evening. It was definitely something a little different. I definitely don't wish to reveal any further details about this aspect, but it reminded me very heavily of The Stanley Parable. It is most definitely not as intricate and well-made in that aspect though, but enjoyable in its own right.
But it is almost equal parts, if not more, an action game. You probably won't enjoy this if you're not going to at least moderately like both sides of the game, as you can't really ignore either. And the action part is actually rather well done. The combat feels fast, responsive, and rewarding. Perhaps overly spammy, and not all too difficult with the correct cheese tactics (which are boring and time consuming, but hey, you don't have to use them and just run on easy mode), but I really liked it.
The entire thing might take about 4-8 hours of your time, depending on how much you want to complete, and how good you are at progressing. The voice acting is also entirely in Chinese, which kinda bothered me, but you have subtitles in English, which luckily aren't badly translated at all.
Overall, it wasn't really super great in any of its parts, but neither were any pieces bad or missing. The variety was refreshing, and I guess I would recommend it, just don't expect too much from it.

06.12.16

About an hour of Prismata and Planetside 2. But I don't feel like I have enough time to properly start a game yet. Slow time of the semester...

05.12.16

A few games of Prismata today, but it's likely I won't have any time at all on most days in the next 2 weeks at least.

Whenever I do get time though, expect some of that mysterious ICEY game. (It doesn't even have a howlongtobeat page, but it's possibly around 6 hours, so perhaps enough to fit on Thursday / Friday.)

04.12.16

Since I'm already making these posts that do not pertain to any specific game I've been playing, here's another one. (tl;dr at the end)

So I figured I'd start with a new game today and pulled another VN out from the metaphorical RNG hat. Now, normally, this wouldn't be a problem and I'd just go and give it a try. But this time, I figured that maybe this is not the best way to go about things.

The problem starts with the fact that visual novels are, as the name says, novels, not games. Of course that point can be argued, less so in the case of kinetic visual novels (which, in my opinion, are usually the best ones), but making decisions and having differing actions happen based on those decisions makes them games, no? No. I think that anything considered a visual novel has too little "gameplay" (if it can even be called that) to consider it a game. Of course, there are always cases that blur the line between the two, and that line can be in different places for different people. I'd label things like Long Live the Queen and Danganronpa under games, even though they're conceptually the same as visual novels - mostly reading, but you can make decisions and have different actions happen based on those decisions. (They're good games by the way, would recommend. Especially the former.)

Now, having established my opinion on them not being games, the question arises whether they're suitable material for this blog. I don't really talk about books I read, nor anime I watch, so why should I discuss VNs? And honestly, I kinda think I shouldn't. The only argument I have is that "other sites focused on games categorize them as games, and discuss them as if they were". Well, that, and that perhaps clicking is a little bit more involved than staring at a screen for 20-25 minutes straight or at two pages for a total of 2-3 minutes before switching to the next episode/page. But I respect my own opinion and the reasoning behind said opinion, and therefore stand by it - no VN discussion on my blog meant for games.

And that would be great and all, but it still leaves one problem - content. I try to write every day, because ideally I should have some sort of material for mostly every day. I try to surround my life with entertainment, which is mostly in the form of video games, but since a good story scratches the entertainment itch just as well as a good game, I'd have far longer periods of time where I wouldn't be playing anything. So from that perspective, why not extend this to cover the other forms of entertainment I enjoy as well, even if just in passing? So, yeah, I'll... make minor adjustments based on this decision.

So, moving back a notch in the topics, the way I've selected visual novels to read so far has been the same as I've done for games. See if something looks interesting, then try it. This differs from how I select other stories, like books or anime, where I just pick something that's popular and well received instead of reading what it's about. (And sticking to the fantasy genre on books, because realistic things tend to be boring for my taste.) Now, I can't do this with games. Possibly because I'm too much of a snob in that area, which is most likely the result of playing too many of them. But visual novels have a very nice database of them, so I can just (mostly) start from the top, and perhaps I'll eventually develop a more refined taste on them.

Except that... it seems a prerequisite for being good is to be lengthy. From the 14 highest rated ones I checked, 11 are >50 hours, and 3 are 30-50. Now, let's put the former into perspective in terms of books. So, you know those thick 600-page giants? Well, those aren't even close. Stack 5 of those, and you'll be at the minimum length these VNs could be. So stack 2-3 more on top of that pile that's nigh too heavy to carry already, and that's an estimate on how long they are. But wait, there's more. Most of those are a part of some multi-episode series, each of which is as long. So, take that giant intimidating pile, and add 2-4 more piles of similar size next to it. Or on top of it. But you'd probably reach the ceiling before they'd fit. And that... is how much reading there is. Now, while I love lengthy stories if they don't get dull, I don't really have that kind of time. So I'm kind of conflicted if I should just start reading, and see where one of them takes me, or pick some of the shorter, <50h ones that don't have a mass of prequels and sequels.

tl;dr: VNs aren't games, so I'll refrain from now on from discussing them as much, but will in turn just as briefly mention any other forms of entertainment I've been enjoying. Also, the best VNs are way too long.

03.12.16

Played some more Battlerite, and my opinion on it hasn't changed. Other than that, a lot of the day went on Planetside 2.

Starting next week and until Christmas, I'll have two tests/exams per week, so I'll be shorter on time than usual. I'd want to partake in Ludum Dare next weekend, but I probably won't if I'm too exhausted from studying. But if I do, expect more info on that.

02.12.16

It was actually yesterday that the Battlerite free weekend begun, but I just got to try it today.

I was, again, expecting a bunch from this game, as it had been generally quite well received, and I really loved the idea of a MOBA without the lanes, and the creeps, and all that stuff. I had also just recently quit Brawlhalla, which had been my main source of PvP for the past months, so I really wanted to like Battlerite, and for it to be my new go-to PvP game.

Perhaps you can already tell from my tone of writing, but I did not. In no particular order, here are things that bugged me:

Really long downtime between such short matches. Characters aren't unique enough. Combat feels washed out, not impactful. Maps are boring. It really feels like there could be a little more to it then just fighting.

Maybe it's a little bit of nostalgia from the games I used to play, so I remember them as much better in comparison, but I don't currently see any reason to want to keep playing Battlerite. The victories didn't mean much to me, nor did losing or my teammate bashing me infuriate me in the slightest. I guess I just didn't care because I wasn't really trying, and that's generally unlike me in a PvP game - I'm very competitive.

So I'll try again at F2P launch, but until then, I guess I'll just spend more time on my backlog and other stuff.

But gosh, now I really want to reminisce about the PvP games I used to play.

Starting with Brawlhalla, which I quit just a week or two ago. Despite being upset for the majority of the time playing it, which is the main reason I quit, I just couldn't pull myself free at times, even though I acknowledged I was upset and not really enjoying the game.

Matchmaking was quick, the matches were really fast-paced, skill-based, I didn't have any teammates to blame for my losses, so I could constantly focus on improving. The entire feel was great as a beginner, and after 200 hours.

But yeah, I quit mainly for the reason mentioned above. (The other being that a fair bunch of the game was built on being able to execute mechanically complicated combos that didn't require any thinking once you learned one. Furthermore, those combos changed from patch to patch, requiring re-learning.) Overall, this really solidified my assumption that team-and-match-based PvP games were always going to be frustrating, which is why I'm hesitant to pick one up unless it really, really fits me.

Before that, I played a month or two of Paragon, but it was fairly traditional mechanics-wise as a MOBA, just dumbed down and worse in comparison to the giants I could always go back to.

Other than that, I've always played Planetside 2, but definitely less actively in the last year or so.

Planetside 2 is currently the only decently good (and properly released) PvP MMO I know. It's been very slowly declining for over a year now, possibly for almost 4 years, ever since its launch, but it still has a decent amount of players for all its purposes.

I have over 1000 hours in it, and it's losing the magic. Sure, it's fun to go in, shoot stuff, participate in battles near unparalleled in size in comparison to other games, but there's no overarching goal. Kill to kill. Fight to capture a continent, just so another one would open up and reset. The cycle continues, and ultimately no one achieves anything.

But then again, that's also the case in any round-based PvP games, where the aforementioned cycle is several tens of times shorter. I guess I'm really just looking forward to something with the depth of EVE, and the action of a MOBA. Darn fairytale, I know, but maybe Crowfall will be half-decent.

I'm not even that big of a fan of FPSes, but still, the fact that there's no rounds, no fixed teammates, and an open-world means I can experience all of the action with none of the frustration. Winning and losing don't exist in the traditional sense, and you're free to do whatever the hell you want, as long as you can.

Sometime during that, I played Heroes of the Storm, which I quit just a tad more than a year ago after about 400 hours and when the matchmaking wasn't really living up to my expectations anymore. (Apparently something to do with there not being enough players at the higher MMR levels.) Still possibly my favorite PvP game in terms of combat, and I often consider going back to it, but I don't genuinely believe I'd enjoy myself anymore.

A very rough estimate for League of Legends is that I stopped playing 2 years ago and have 500 +- 200 hours in it. I just straight out switched to Heroes of the Storm when I got closed beta access to it, and never looked back. The last hitting, long matches and a laning phase, as well as the quick kill times, didn't really suit me. HotS also has an amazing variety of characters to play, not to mention the maps, and the different objectives.

If anything, that's the PvP game I'd go back to, but still, I'm afraid it won't be worth it.

Blizzard makes games with really consistently good quality, at least lately. Now, if only they did something from a genre which I really enjoyed, like an MMO... Oh, wait, there's WoW, and I am guilty of blaming it for the delaying the search for what actually makes a good MMO, as well as ruining MMOs, for a good 10 years.

01.12.16

This ain't even funny. Where did yesterday go? I swear today is the 1st of December...