Steam Spring Clean: Nostalgia

What games have I played in my library for more than two hours, but haven't played at all in a long time since? Well, Steam suggested this lot as part of its 'Nostalgia' category.

There are a fair few games to avoid for the moment from these suggestions. The Call of Duty entries will have their moment to shine in their 1001 posts, as will the likes of FlatOut and Football Manager. Some have already been played, including The 7th Guest and Star Wars: TIE Fighter, and I'm in no rush to go back to either. From what remains, one title did jump out, now that I'm more into my tabletop gaming, and that was Card Hunter.

In it, you play against Gamesmaster Gary in a game where the combat encounters of Dungeons & Dragons are played with handfuls of cards and unseen dice rolls.

I've actually reviewed it before, a long time ago, for BasedGamer, which now points to a site that definitely isn't about user-created game reviews, as was its intention. In that review, I eventually got to the point where I liked it, but it had its problems. Read on to find out what I meant.

Steam Spring Clean: Can't Wait

Sometimes - so I've heard - players get a game and simply can't wait to play it, doing so at the earliest opportunity. The 'Can't Wait' category is a little flexible in the definition of 'earliest opportunity', giving me a random selection of titles that I've bought in the last six months, and could do with playing.

Some unexpected titles in this bunch. I can't even be sure I own them, which must mean many of them came in bundles. I've played a lot of the Pathfinder Adventures game, so that's an instantly avoided one. Thought I bought it earlier, but evidently not. Firewatch has been completed too, so there's no need to hop into that, though I would like a second playthrough to approach the story differently. I've forgotten how I approached it the first time around, though, so that might be tricky.

Of the leftovers, Passpertout was a frontrunner for allowing you to pass yourself off as an artist selling crap on the streets, but it was Jalopy that won out, the car repair and road trip simulator.

Mixed reviews in recent days, but it was in the last Humble Monthly Bundle, so it's fresh enough for a 'Can't Wait', I think.

What Have I Played This Week? (Wk03)

Lots of games this week, thanks to the Steam Spring Cleaning event, an active local gaming store and the slow nature of snail mail. I do intend to get back to the 1001 list, whereupon this type of entry will get smaller, but until my post arrives and hopefully gets played (for it'd be a right joke if I couldn't get it to run or something), I'm left to see what else is out there.

Once again, let's get the games that you know about out the way. Dead by Daylight, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Sorcery! and Chroma Squad have all had an outing thanks to the Steam Spring Clean event. You can read much more detail about them in their respective posts, but the long and short of my time with them would be 'nope', 'neat', 'not ideal, but yeah' and 'nice idea, hope it pays off'.

The only other game that is old this week is good old Star Realms, which has seen quite the development - I've actually bought the full version. I say full version, for it's a little bit of a cheeky name. You don't get absolutely everything, you just unlock a few extra modes and options. I also bought the Colony Wars expansion for it, which effectively doubles the number of cards you can play with.

Why this change of heart on not buying the digital version? Well, myself, P2 and White Wizard Games are all in the same area at the same time next week, and there's a tournament for us to put our money where our mouths are and see just how good we really are. P2 is not expecting to progress far. I'm not expecting to get much further, to be honest, but anything can happen. It'll be my first tournament for anything of this nature, so it'll be an interesting line in the sand. Or an afternoon of getting my arse whipped. I don't know yet. Looking forward to it.

Now, I've been much busier than just those lot of games though. Mostly on the PlayStation 4, and there's a fair bit of VR in this lot too. See what I got up to after the fold.

Steam Spring Clean: Spin Cycle

The 'Spin Cycle' category is straight up randomness, and thankfully Steam has seen it fit to limit my choice to just four games - any more and they'd remain unplayed, I'm sure.

I can't even read what the first one is, so that can wait a while longer. The Walking Dead I'm well aware of, having seen but not played it. That too can wait, leaving just Chroma Squad and Skullgirls.

Now I remember buying Skullgirls, or a bundle that included Skullgirls, or through some other method which results in me not actually knowing how I got Skullgirls into my Steam library, and I remember getting it because I knew it was a 2D fighter with stylised characters. I'm no pro when it comes to fighting games, but the premise was interesting enough to warrant a look.

Chroma Squad, on the other hand, is an unknown title, but when I found out it's about a bunch of stuntmen forming their own TV series along the lines of Power Rangers, my inner child - who watched Power Rangers and wanted to become a stuntman (not because of Power Rangers, mind) - immediately hit the install button and got prepared.

Steam Spring Clean: Speed Clean

The daily 'Speed Clean' category is nonsense. It's not a cleaning category, for it tasks you with playing a game that is free for the weekend, with the assumption being that you'll find it worth buying come the end of the trial period, therefore having a new title in your backlog. It is the opposite of cleaning, but I'll see where it leads me nonetheless.

Joy. A multiplayer horror game I don't care about and a city-builder I've already pumped nearly 50 hours into. I guess I better go with Dead by Daylight then - better play it to see whether I actually like it or not, eh?

It's an asymmetric multiplayer game where one monster tries to stop four humans from escaping the map. It sounds like a simple formula and I haven't played anything like it, to my knowledge. Unless we count The Playroom VRs monster vs players level, which is much more interesting than Dead by Daylight and I want to play it more than write about Dead by Daylight. Am I biased? I think so. Better fire up the game to find out.

Steam Spring Clean: Trusted Advisor

The 'Trusted Advisor' category of the Steam Spring Cleaning event is a fancy way of saying 'People with far more time to play games than you have said that these games are worth playing and despite you owning them, you haven't gotten round to it yet'.

The suggestions just went on and on and on, but many were repeated, perhaps because multiple Steam Curators advised me and hundreds of thousands of other players to play them. Again, trying to avoid games I knew I'd get to at some point, for one reason or another (no, honest, I will get to some of these games, I know it's a Spring Cleaning event), I eventually settled on a title that I knew got all the attention a few years back, and that is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

If memory serves, I got this at a heavy discount - an absurdly heavy discount, for what is a modestly priced game in the first place - but still had no need to urgently play it, even when I knew it was a short game.

If Steam wants to give me the kick up the rear I need to play it, then I'll spare a couple of hours and play it.

Steam Spring Clean: Another Chance

The Steam Spring Clean event gave me some motivation to spread out into my library further than I have been. While I wait for physical games to arrive in the post, why not download digital games to play right here and now?

First up are some suggestions from the 'Another Chance' category, with a selection of games that I've played for less than one hour and should think about playing again.

This is an interesting list because, so far as I can recall, I've played none of these for less than an hour, because I've played none of these for more than a second either. I suppose, technically, they count for being played for less than an hour then, in that case...

Anyway, knowing that a couple of those will be coming up in the 1001 list (A Boy and His Blob and Shadow Complex), and knowing that some are bound to be pretty similar to games I've already played (can't imagine the Quake Mission Pack or Tomb Raider II being too different from Quake and Tomb Raider), I eventually whittled down my choose to Aviary Attorney or Sorcery!.

So, the first game played could have been about birds solving crimes or a reimagining of a childhood game book. As much as one sounds interesting, the other hit my nostalgia alarm bells, and I'll be having a bash at Sorcery!, thank you very much.

No, I've no idea where or why I purchased it in 2016, but I'll be interested to see why it's in my library and to find out whether it'll stay there. Let's turn the page and found out.

What Have I Played This Week? (Wk02)

Another week, another opportunity to tackle whatever floats in front of my face long enough for me to register an interest. Before going into the new stuff, a quick summary of the games I'm still playing from last week.

Star Realms continues to be my go-to game when there are five minutes to kill, and over the course of the week, I got better and better, seemingly overcoming my slump. Still, it's only getting better against a medium strength A.I., so it's not where I want to be playing really. I'm still not sold on buying the digital version of what's sat behind me. Hopefully, there'll be a deal or something when the next big lot of physical cards get shipped out in a few months.

The Witcher 3 still looks pretty, but all I was doing was hoovering up treasure in the form of Witcher gear diagrams. If you really want to be critical of the series, it's an awful lot of fetch quests, but they're well written and set in wonderful environments, so it get's a pass.

I dabbled in Superhot again, now I've got the endless mode unlocked. 49 kills, not too shabby. Wasn't the neatest of rounds, with lots of silly decisions made but I managed the situation for a while - until the red dudes really started rushing in.

In two lengthy sessions, we appear to have come to an end of a Pathfinder campaign, but perhaps not the end, I'm not too sure. The fight that dragged on through the night did appear to involve the big bad evil guy (albeit in the form of a small, possibly radioactive child), but he's still alive and kicking, and some of the players get the impression that there's more to come, that there has to be, because it's a bit of a let down if this is the end of the super dungeon. We shall see how it goes next week, I suppose.

And now, continue reading for the new games.

F-Zero X

Booster OK!!

Is it safe to say that when it comes to sci-fi racing games, players are usually in one of two camps? Those who swear their allegiance to Wipeout (wipE'out"?) and those who follow F-Zero? Sorry to all the fans of XGIII there...

If it is safe to say that, then I am - as you might have read in this blog before - firmly grounded in an anti-gravity craft belonging to the Wipeout series. Nintendo consoles weren't my thing back in those formative years, so it doesn't matter how good F-Zero X was claimed to be because I just wasn't there to know it at the time.

Even in the decades since, I know only of F-Zero games as 'like Wipeout but with more, smaller ships'. That's what I've got going into this game. Many small ships, kinda like Wipeout. I think it's time to educate myself.

Panzer Dragoon Saga

"Those fools. They cannot even handle normal weapons."

Source // Wikipedia

What the Sega Saturn really needed in the tail end of the 1990s was a huge 3D RPG spanning four discs and based on an on-rails shooter. It doesn't make sense when you write it down, does it? However, if we replace 'an on-rails shooter' with 'Panzer Dragoon', an on-rails shooter where you pilot giant dragon things that shoot lasers, then you might just be onto a winner by giving that idea some room to breathe in an RPG.

Enter Panzer Dragoon Saga, a story of war and dragons, where science fiction meets ancient civilizations. It's a bit different, is what it is...

What Have I Played This Week? (Wk01)

The Evergrowing Backlog is focused on my journey through 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, sure, but it is not exclusive to that goal. The games on the list were all released earlier than 2010, and I believe the second edition expands that to 2012, but here I am, in the middle of 2018, playing games that weren't even conceived when these books were published.

None of us can hope to stay on top of such huge amounts of games in any reasonable time frame, not with jobs and social lives and other hobbies and whatnot, but I do try to play more than what I'm told to. I try to play games I like, or games I've been wanting to play for some time because playing games you don't like or don't want to play is stupid.

And so, here's a quick look back at what I've played this past week.

Xenogears

Huff, huff... We shall be as Gods.

This shot, more or less, was the image used in the 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die book in order to entice readers into a deep, deep game that merges science fiction and fantasy and philosophy and ethics and lord knows what else, I was too distracted by the mechs it had as well.

This is the first playable section of Xenogears and a better screenshot should have been used. I don't know what - I'm no editor (have you even read this blog?) - but it could be more descriptive, I think. Something like this.

Yeah. Hard to see Mechs in the dark. That's the one.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go to space and see what's happening.

Body Harvest

The Aliens have returned... and they're hungry.

Some of the games on the 1001 list are masterpieces, presenting gamers with the absolute best experience that the technological progress of the times could allow. They have a fanbase that spans across the world, they have genre-defining entries in their series, and have spawned entertainment outside of the video game, bleeding across into geek culture, and whathaveyou.

Then there's Body Harvest, which very few seem to know or care about, despite it being another milestone on the road to open world 3D games like Grand Theft Auto III - also developed by the studio behind Body Harvest.

What's it all about then, this hidden gem? Why is there a spaceman blowing up a huge bug in the desert?