It’s backlog clearing day.
It happens to nearly every Steam user on the planet. A sale comes on or there’s an attractively priced bundle on Steam or elsewhere, and suddenly there’s ten more games in your library. Do that for long enough and suddenly you have 100+ games sitting on Steam waiting to be played. While I feel I’ve done good about not buying up any sweet deal I see over the last few years, the fact remains that I have managed to amass quite the backlog. I blame being young and discovering the joy of having disposable income.
Game collecting is certainly fun and all, but what good is buying games if you never play them right? That’s why I decided to pick out ten random games from my backlog and give them a proper chance. No more excuses, no judging by the cover, just sitting back and trying out a handful of games and see how I like them. I’ll be approaching this the way I do my NES and SNES blog series. I’ll allow at least an hour with each game, unless I dislike it strongly enough before that point. Also, I’ll try not to go too in depth with any one of these games, and instead just quickly summarize if I liked it or not and why. So with that, let’s immediately get weird.
AaaaaaAaaaaaAaaaahh!!! for the Awesome
Well…that’s a title.
……why…anything? I mean, I get why they’re called hugs and kisses at least, for approaching and staying near a building. But why anything else? This isn’t to say it’s a bad game, it is pretty fun. But I’m not sure I understand the point. There does seem to be a point, with this game’s very, very prominent social commentary and attempts at satire, but I don’t think I get it. Doesn’t help that this game’s sense of humor is the kind of thing I would have laughed at when I was thirteen, but not so much at twenty five. No, at twenty five years old, the best the humor really does for me is make me laugh at it, as opposed to with it. It’s very 2000s/early 2010s…you know the type. The “LOL, random” type of humor. Actually, wait. That hasn’t left yet, has it? Crap.
Moment to moment gameplay is fun and for what it’s worth I played through my entire one hour without feeling bored. The game at least knows what it is – a simple “get your best score” kind of game, and provides a ton of levels to play through. Each level is only a few minutes long, so it’s a good title for quick bursts. If you find that you’re into it, then there’s plenty to play with for a while. But as for me, I don’t see myself going back for more after this hour with the game.
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine
What we have here is a stealth game where the object is to gather the main quest item, gathering small coins along the way, and escape. Basically, you’re performing a heist. You pick a character who has a perk you like and go for it. All in all, the game is plenty fun, but as I played I got the sense that it was designed to be played with multiple people. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t get any opportunities to play with friends, so this is a bit of a problem for me. Not helping it is the fact that I really don’t feel like I need to be that stealthy to play the game effectively. There were many times where I just barreled through a level and was able to get out okay other than losing a few lives (which resets every level).
Also, the game starts to feel repetitive really quickly. I played this one for about an hour and a half and now I have the sense that I’ve seen most of what the game has to offer. The closest thing to mixing it up other than the level design itself is the different characters you can choose from and the occasional new enemy or security measure introduced. I at least thought the game good enough to give it a second chance, but I think all that did was cement my feelings on it as well as give me some new complaints. Later levels feel designed to force the single player to fail, so multiple people will be a necessity if you want those perfect scores. And the climactic moment of the story can only be properly experienced if you’re playing with someone else, which is a huge letdown for the single player. Bottom line, this game is fine on your own but it’s only best if you have somebody (preferably multiple somebodies) to play the game with.
Orcs Must Die
I know the whole point of this blog is to play a bunch of games and not judge them by the cover, but I really felt myself doing that with Orcs Must Die’s title. It’s to the point, which I can appreciate, but the title just screams “so-so indie title” to me. Thus, I lowered my expectations. Then I find out it’s a tower defense game and my expectations sink further down. Tower defense is one genre that I’ve never been able to enjoy, and I was very doubtful this game would change my mind about the genre. But to my complete and utter surprise, I walked out of Orcs Must Die really enjoying it.
The big helper here is that it’s not just a tower defense game, but also a third person shooter. You’re not just placing objects, clicking a button, and seeing if your objects keep the enemy away. No, you get to jump into the action yourself and contribute your physical prowess to the mix. Simply put, Orcs Must Die encourages both the use of brains and brawn. This isn’t the first time I’ve played a game like this, but it is the first time it was this fun. By default you’re given a crossbow for each level and you choose your remaining weapons, spells, and traps from there. Before a wave starts you have an opportunity to get a look at the environment and lay traps accordingly. Once the orcs you arrive, you kill them just as the title demands using your weapons and spells in combination with the traps you laid in advance. Had the game just been third person shooting or just tower defense this game simply wouldn’t be as fun, but combining the two elements along with allowing custom loadouts and encouraging creative trap laying makes this a really good game.
It’s not without its faults though. There are some technical hiccups here and there, the most common one I saw being a certain orc model that wasn’t playing its walking animation correctly, thus looking like it was constantly having a seizure. Not every trap feels particularly useful and I find myself just defaulting to the spike floor trap and the trap that slows the enemies down along with the ability to spawn archers to help me out. I also typically pick the sword for close range attacks, and either the explosive potion spell or the wind spell depending on the level. The remaining one or two slots just go to whatever I feel would be most helpful in the level, assuming I can find anything. And that is a bit of an issue. I wish I had reason to use all these abilities and traps as the levels demand, but there’s a decent number of tools that just aren’t good. In terms of characters and story, what little there is, it feels like a Dreamworks movie that didn’t get far into production. The main character even makes the Dreamworks face. Perhaps this look and style was the intention, but I’m not sure it’s for me. It’s at least a few steps above what AaaaAaaaAaaa’s humor was, but still somewhat lacking overall. Still, despite a few balancing issues and some meh writing, this game has been a pleasant surprise and a lot of fun. I already have plans to go back to the game and see it through to the end.
Puzzle Agent
This next entry comes from Telltale Games. Yes, The Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands…that Telltale. I feel like people forget that Telltale was making games before they made their Walking Dead game. And sometimes…I feel like that’s for the best. I’ve only played one other pre-Walking Dead Telltale, that being their shot at Back to the Future, and Puzzle Agent marks my second. It’s certainly the most different of the Telltale games I’ve played, consisting of a gameplay style very similar to the Professor Layton games. And while I loved the Professor Layton game I’ve played, I’m not nearly as into this. A bit of a shame considering it has all the ingredients to be something I would really like.
You play as…gosh, I already forget his name and as I write this I literally just closed the game two minutes ago. Harold, I think? Let’s just call him Harold. He’s an FBI agent, specifically working in the Puzzle Services, and it’s certainly amusing that the FBI has such a department in this universe. There’s been some kind of accident at an eraser factory in Montana, and you’ve been sent in to look into it. Our protagonist questions the people he comes into contact with and, you guessed it, solves puzzles to uncover the mystery.
First thing we have to mention is the art style. This might be a bit harsh, but Puzzle Agent is an ugly game. Everything from the characters to the environment seems very sketchy (heh heh), like the developer went with their first, unpolished version. It would be a bit better if the game presented itself in a sort of comic book style and used a lot of still images, but this game made the mistake of having animation on top of the art style and it’s just bad. Not only does it look like it’s moving at two frames a second, but the characters look funny as they move, especially the main character. The visuals in the puzzle solving bits, where they’re just still images, look a lot better thanks to the lack of movement.
Speaking of puzzles, they seem hit or miss to me. As mentioned before, this game is much like a Professor Layton title. You’re presented with a variety of puzzles, and you have hint points (chewing gum, in this case) that you can spend to get hints for puzzles you find hard. Now, I know puzzle games are really hard to balance because every individual person finds different puzzles hard. That’s why the hint points are there, and those are good. But I do feel like you may have designed your puzzles badly if every other puzzle has me spending at least two hint points to solve it. On multiple occasions I have to spend my hint points to solve this otherwise overly difficult puzzle and at some point I started thinking it wasn’t my fault. Sometimes I can’t look at the rules and solve the puzzle at the same time, other times I find its visual language confusing, and occasionally the puzzle just straight up doesn’t give me information I need such as character names. Maybe the sequel (yes, there’s a sequel to this) will address all this, but that sequel was only made a year later. And considering in 2019 we learned a lot about how Telltale operated, I can’t say I’m expecting that much improvement.
DOTA 2
I played very little of this compared to almost everything else here and if it’s alright with everyone else, I’m going to keep it that way. I played a single match against bots and figured that was enough for me. The thought of doing a match online with real people filled me with so much anxiety, plus I already knew I’d be way out of my league. So at that point I just asked what the point of continuing on was. I had my fill of MOBAs to last me a lifetime when I played a game called Awesomenauts with some friends back in the day, so I’m certainly not longing for any of that mundane repetitive action. This is very much like what happened with Monaco where I can clearly tell this game would be a lot better if you have actual friends, or even total strangers, to play it with. Without that, it’s kind of pointless to play.
Also should mention that I’m really not a fan of the controls. It took me the longest time to figure out that spells are done with the left mouse click as opposed to the right mouse click, which was regular attacks. Before I figured that out I got the sense that my spells weren’t doing much, but couldn’t really tell since I was shooting a magical looking attack anyway. I am also not a huge fan of moving the camera via moving the mouse to the edge of the screen or the arrow keys. WASD wasn’t being used for anything in my time so I fail to understand why I couldn’t just use that. “Just rebind it” you might say…and go to that trouble for messing with the key bindings for a game I was already not looking forward to? Don’t give me that. I didn’t mind this control scheme in Starcraft 2 because I’m not actively partaking in the battle, I’m just ordering people around. DOTA 2 has you take part in the battle and thus the camera controls feel a lot more annoying. I’m sure some will ask how that’s so different, but trust me when I say it is.
Cities in Motion 2
Wow, I didn’t even play this one for thirty minutes. Even DOTA got more time than that. I can’t even get out of the tutorial level. Maybe there’s a fun game in here – Steam reviews seem to indicate as much – but I really can’t be bothered to find out anymore because of the clunky user interface and the failure of the tutorial to explain the game’s rules and systems well. Which is quite ironic considering the number of words the tutorial wants you to read. And I read it all, I promise…but this isn’t working. The game just doesn’t let me place objects despite it looking like I should be able to. It’s very confusing, which sucks because this was a game I really wanted to like going in. But if even the tutorial is confusing and frustrating, than I can only imagine what the rest of the game is like.
Despite how it looks, this game is not a city builder like Cities: Skylines or SimCity. Cities in Motion 2 has you creating public transportation routes and buildings to, well, keep the city in motion. Three major problems kept me from getting past the tutorial. I already mentioned how poor of a job the tutorial does at communicating the game’s rules, but compounding it is how hard it is to see anything. Yes, you can zoom in to better see what you’re doing but my experience with sims in the past tells me I shouldn’t have to. The tutorial tries to explain how to create your transit routes and stops and buildings but I can never tell what I can build and what I can’t. Problem number two is the unintuitive UI, where you might press a button and the corresponding submenu opens…to the left…and not above the button like I keep expecting. Plus I found it hard to understand what button does what. To name one example, there’s an icon of a bus on the top menu but is it for building stations or setting up lines? And finally, why is the text so small? Maybe there’s a setting I should have changed, but it seems weird that the text for this game is small enough that I have to lean in to comprehend what the game is trying to tell me.
Maybe my time with games like Cities: Skylines and similar titles has affected how I look at sim games such as these and I have these lofty expectations. Perhaps I should have been more patient and kept working at it. Maybe fooling around in the sandbox would have been the better way to start and I just feel my way through the game. All of these things I maybe should have done are certainly valid, but come on. I go into a tutorial expecting to learn the game’s mechanics, and I walk out of it before the thirty minute mark with more questions than answers. Maybe I am bad at vidja gamez and I should git gud, but somehow I’m not sure that any of this is my fault.
Pixeljunk Eden
I try to avoid describing games as “weird” primarily because I find it somewhat derogatory, but Pixeljunk Eden is certainly an experience. An admittedly weird experience. Like, I’ve never been on a drug trip (and I intend to keep it that way), but if I had than I think this is what that trip would look like. As I played the game, I literally thought that this game was the doorway to somebody’s mind. I can’t think of the last game to do that to me. But anyway, what is Pixeljunk Eden? It’s ultimately a casual platformer where you take control of a little critter and jump around onto these plant-like structures to reach the goal. There’s these seeds that you fill with what I believe the game refers to as “pollen” that, once filled, grow into plants. In growing plants, more platforms are added to the level. There are multiple end goal items, called Spectra, in a level meaning that you’ll be going back to levels to collect the other Spectra, Mario 64 style.
Pixeljunk Eden game is very physics based which runs a bit counter to the platforming. The golden rule of platforming games is to have precise physics and controls, something Pixeljunk doesn’t have. It appears to be making up for it by making platforms large enough to easily land on. Good on it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have a hard time going where I want to go sometimes. You also gain new abilities as you play, and sometimes they change how you approach the gameplay and other times it feels like they either make your platforming worse or are just forgettable. For examples, a really useful silk ability comes that you can use to defeat enemies faster. Meanwhile, there’s this drop attack that always sent me plummeting to the bottom of the level and never revealed its usefulness. Whether the abilities I got just sort of being there is a regular occurrence or not is unknown.
Overall, I enjoyed my hour with Pixeljunk but I have no plans to return to it. It feels like I’ve seen a lot of what the game has to offer. Maybe some abilities will come about that change how I approach the levels, but somehow I doubt that. New abilities do change how you might approach individual situations, but I don’t think any of them are required to get every item in a given level. Can’t know unless I played the full game of course. If you find yourself intrigued by it, I would say give it a go.
Scribblenauts: Unlimited
This falls into the “make your own fun” camp of video gaming. While it’s not boring like, say, a generic open world multiplayer only thing with nothing to do but goof around, it’s only slightly better than that. The game is fun enough, but there isn’t enough here to hold my attention for more sessions. Scribblenauts: Unlimited has a simple premise – you have a notebook that can create any object you write in it. Using this overpowered ability you go around the world and do stuff for people in a quest to save your sister from turning to stone because you were a massive jerk to a wizard. That’s literally the plot by the way, I didn’t make any of this up. Also, you apparently have a dinosaur tamer for a brother.
Scribblenauts hits its highest highs when you solve a problem in the most outrageous ways. Sure, you could get rid of a bully by distracting him with something, or you can send a tyrannosaurus rex after him. Because it’s so reliant on you creating ridiculous scenarios to solve problems, the mileage you’ll get out of the game depends on how creative you want to get with your solutions. It’s not that I lack creativity. After all, I’ve made video games of my own which require some amount of creative juice to develop. No, the reason I find the game somewhat “meh” is because when I’m working to solve problems in a video game I will instinctively try to find the most efficient way to do it. The NPC needs something to eat? Give him an apple. Done. It’s probably the programmer part of my brain that prevents me from getting outlandish with my solutions and instead just focus on getting the job done.
Not helping is the fact that the game remains basically the same from start to finish. The only thing that really changes is what words to type in to finish the quest. So on top of relying on player creativity to get the most fun out of it, the game is just repetitive too. My single one hour session with Scribblenauts: Unlimited showed me everything the game has to offer and I feel I can carry on with my life never playing it again. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad game, but I feel you’ll only really like it if you’re the type who likes to make Rube Goldberg machines.
Contrast
This next game gets to sit up there with Orcs Must Die in the “will see this to the end” camp. I don’t know yet if I like it more than Orcs, but I at least can say confidently that I enjoy it. Of course, it probably helps that Contrast is only a few hours long according to How Long to Beat, but even if it were longer I think I like what I see enough that I’d be willing to stick with it. In it you play as some unnamed acrobat who is helping this little girl named Didi track down her parents and attempt to reunite them. The acrobat has the interesting ability to turn herself into a shadow and use the very shadows on the walls to navigate her way throughout the world. In a nutshell, Contrast is a platformer that bounces back and forth between 3D world exploring, 2D platforming using the shadows, and some light puzzle solving.
The main thing I enjoy about Contrast is using the shadows as platforms to traverse the environment. Getting from point A to point B often involves moving around some objects in the 3D space in such a way that shadows are cast onto the walls, whereupon you use them as platforms to reach your destination. It’s one of the more clever game mechanics I’ve seen in a while. To, heh heh…contrast my previous point (please laugh), my major criticism of the game is the abundance of cutscenes. It happens often that I’ll be playing the game for less than five minutes before I get hit with another cutscene, followed by a few more minutes of gameplay, and then another cutscene. Sure, they can be skipped, but considering the story driven nature of the game it would probably be a bad idea to do so.
It’s always funny when my criticism of a game boils down to “let me play it more” because, well, you play a video game expecting to play it. I wouldn’t have minded more time jumping around on the shadows some more before a given cutscene. Moving from one shadow platform to the next is fun and unique and my main fear as I continue the game will be that the shadow platforming won’t get the exploration it deserves. For what it’s worth, the bite sized gameplay chunks keeps the game moving with levels never really getting time to become stale, so I suppose that’s a plus. Going back to the story for a moment, the cutscenes are portrayed via shadows on the wall throughout the duration of Contrast. The only exception to this is the Didi character, who is the only character aside from the player avatar that has been given a model. It certainly works with the game’s overall style, but it can also be really weird seeing Didi talk to a character’s shadow as if the physical person is standing right in front of her. At those points it almost looks like the developers intentionally did all other characters as shadows to cut corners, which I can certainly understand as a game developer but also can’t deny that it makes some cutscenes look a bit strange.
Take on Helicopters
A question, readers. What is it with flight sims and never explaining anything? Is there something so wrong with showing me what key I need to press to lift off? Or to look around? Or to do anything? “Oh, but you should have bought a flight stick, it would’ve helped.” Be that as it may, the least the game can do is give a little guidance on how to control things. And besides, I highly doubt a fancy joystick would’ve saved Take on Helicopters for me. All I wanted was information, specifically control information, but this game seems to think I took the time to look through the control settings or just assumes I’ve played a flight sim before. And I have, but I never got far because no flight sim explains how to control the silly bird. They put the cart before the horse and explain the intricacies of piloting an aircraft before explaining how to control the stupid thing with the physical input device in front of you.
Though let’s not pretend that lack of control information is the only thing holding Take on Helicopters back for me. The character movement is really, really clunky. Moving the character feels like you’re constantly tripping over yourself while having a broken neck. The head movement with the mouse is way too much and I cannot get the precision I want with it. I always move about a quarter screen further than I intended, and there doesn’t appear to be settings for mouse sensitivity or anything similar. Icons are way too tiny and the text even tinier, and for a flight sim the user interface showing things like RPM and fuel don’t seem all that detailed or descriptive. This is a hard pass for me. Maybe one day I’ll play a flight sim that actually tells me how to play the game.
And there we have it. Ten games of…mixed quality. Some were good, some were bad, and others were somewhere in between. Oh well, at least I can say I tried them. I at least found a couple diamonds, those being Orcs Must Die and Contrast. Perhaps I’ll do this again one day with another random selection of games. In fact, looking at my backlog, I’d say the odds of doing this again are pretty good. So I guess we’ll be back for round two sometime in the future. I’m sure it will be just as interesting.
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