Pasq's Gaming Blog

I am currently doing my own take on The BBacklog Challenge Backlog List: 104 Games To Finish List: ~ 50 Games / Series

[gaming-pasq]

To Be Continued... Elsewhere

So... There has been quite a silence here, I know.

I had to take a serious break from Steam gaming, kinda felt burned out. At first I thought I would only take a week or two break so I didn’t bother making a post about it. But then it became a month. Then two months. Now we’re close to three months, I think...

I intend to start the Backlog Challenge again at the start of 2019. Though I might already play a game or two this December, who knows. But I will use December to look for a different place and way to post about them, because Tumblr is going downhill fast and I do not want to support a place that is going to ban NSFW stuff but lets racists and the like do whatever they want.

So yeah, this is pretty much the end of this blog, but not the end of this thing.

[gaming-pasq]

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

(personal choice, as well as nominated by @snapdragonsoda)

A few weeks ago, Spike Chunsoft’s games were on sale on Steam. And since I liked what I had played of the Zero Escape series, and I had been curious about Danganronpa (Steam store link) for a while, I decided I might as well get it. I went ahead and also got the sequel, as it was even cheaper for each to get them together.

If you know me, visual novels aren’t exactly my thing. I would rather just watch an actual anime or read a book than “play” a game that isn’t a game. But occasionally I can enjoy a visual novel if it has enough game elements, and the Zero Escape series had some actual gameplay mixed in between the story elements, with the overall story of that series being pretty good and interesting. So I was expecting Danganronpa to be a similar mix of gameplay and story.

I was wrong. Oh boy was I wrong. This “game” has pretty much no true game elements at all. It CONSTANTLY tells you what to do next and most of the time doesn’t even give you an option to do anything else. The class trials add in a few “game” challenges but even here you basically just follow the story and if you make a mistake you just gotta keep trying until you pick the right thing.

Only once in the whole “game” was there a true choice between two options.

Fin or Bin?

And yet I finished it. But that was solely for two reasons: The overall story really is good, and I wanted to know how it would end. And CJ was heavily invested in it as well, so I wanted to finish it for her too.

But man, did I also hate it. I spent 36 hours to complete it, while it should have been done in 12 hours top. SO. MUCH. REPETITION. “Let’s have the same flashback 5 times.” “Let’s go over this one more time. And another time.” “Okay, we solved the thing, so we should now tell the whole thing again, because we need more filler.”

And the game feels like it assumes the player is the dumbest human on earth, holding the players hand through the whole game, thinking there’s no way the player could figure out things by themselves. I had solved and figured out 90% of each murder way way way before the game told me "go check this and check that and you gotta check that one thing first why are you going to the part that has the solution you cannot go there yet you gotta go through these 17 things first you idiot!”

It was tedious, frustrating, and boring. Many times I just wanted to stop and watch the anime instead. Which is apparently the exact same thing but much much faster. I really should have just watched the anime. But I had started it as the game, and I was committed to finish it.

...and now I unlocked an alternate mode where I can actually have conversations with all the other characters without the game constantly telling me “do this” and “do that,” getting some background information on all of them.

And I get to collect everyone’s panties now. So there’s that, at least, which the anime doesn’t provide.

[gaming-pasq]

Armello

(personal choice)

Finishing up the recent Digital Tabletop Bundle from Humble, Armello (Steam store link) was the other game in the bundle I had been eyeing for a while.

This is a board game that only exists digitally, as it uses some stuff that would be difficult to implement in a physical game, mostly the “stealth” attribute, but also a few other things like the guard movements. Other than that, it looks and plays like a board game, mostly using cards and dice to play the game.

The king of Armello is corrupted by the rot, and every night he gets more corrupted and every day he dies a little. The goal is to become the new king/queen of Armello, by either beating the old king in battle (regular or while being higher in corruption), by collecting four stones to cleanse the corruption, or by having the most prestige when the king dies any other way.

The game is always four players, and while there are a few benefits of working together at times, mostly you play against each other trying to reach one way to become the new ruler of Armello. Each turn alternates day and night, and has different aspects going on. You have four different stats that you can increase by doing quests, and you have 3 inventory and 3 follower slots to which you can play cards to affect even more stuff and increase stats. There are also other cards like perils and spells. And then I haven’t even mentioned the dice yet, which have 6 symbols which act differently depending on day/night, whether you’re corrupted or not, or which items/followers you have. Oh, and each card also has one of those six symbols and you can burn the cards to guarantee roll that symbol. Oh, and each character you can play as also has a completely different skill.

Yeah, there’s a lot going on, and I haven’t even explained the rot properly, nor the guards and the banes and the tiles like dungeons.... It takes more than a few games to really start understanding this game.

Fin or Bin?

Now. I generally like complex board games like this. And I think my time play shows this, I’m already past 30 hours... So I would say this is a finish. To me, the game feels a lot like Talisman, another board game I quite like and have spent digitally over a hundred hours on. The different characters with different skills, the multiple stats you can (and have to) slowly increase to stand a chance. The combination of cards and dice and the high RNG both have. The sometimes working together but mostly attacking each other. No way they didn’t take inspiration from Talisman when making this game. But at the same time, it plays completely different and has a lot of other things that change it up. Which is good and what makes it stand out and be enjoyable on its own.

That said, I have more than a few complaints though. There are more DLC characters than there are base game ones, and half of them are more powerful than the base characters. I wouldn’t be upset about this (Talisman has a similar issue) if there was an option in multiplayer to only play with base characters (like Talisman does.) But there isn’t, a multiplayer becomes close to impossible to enjoy as people keep using the overpowered DLC characters.

Multiplayer has other issues as well currently, most notably you cannot just play a game with specific people (including your friends.) You are put in queue and just play against whoever is online at that time. This is dumb for a board game, where most of the people usually want to play with friends. Apparently the option existed before, but people ganged upon other people so they got rid of it. There’s talks they’re working on a different solution, but right now, multiplayer is no fun.

And BUGS. So. Many. Bugs. The game will stop playing properly half the time. If you quit a single player game halfway with the intend to play later, you are most likely not gonna be able to restart that game. And then there are hundreds and hundreds of other issues being posted on the bugs discussion board that I haven’t encountered myself. The devs acknowledge the issues and are working on some of these, but seem to focus more on trying to get money by releasing skins and loot boxes. Yes, this game has loot boxes... You can get... fancy digital dice. -_-

[gaming-pasq]

Mysterium

(personal choice)

Continuing with the recent Digitial Tabletop Bundle from Humble, Mysterium (Steam store link) was one of the two games I got the bundle for as I had been wanting to try it.

I should note from the start, this is another Asmodee Digital production, and as such, I had not many hopes for it. But it was in the $1 tier, and I assumed that even if the digital version sucks, at least I will know how to play it and if it would be worth getting physically to play with the family and friends.

Anyway, in Mysterium, one player is a ghost and the other players are mediums. The ghost cannot talk, but has various cards with a ton of stuff on them that it can give to the other players as clues as to help them guess who killed the ghost player, as well as where and with what. It’s a bit difficult to explain in just plain text, but basically it’s a combination of Clue and Dixit, if you’re familiar with those games, with a little spice added to it.

Fin or Bin?

Since this is a digital board game, technically I finished a few games within the hour of playing. But as for coming back to it? I’m pretty sure I won’t, unless it gets achievements and I’m bored enough to hunt for them.

The digital version isn’t as bad as it could have been. They tried to make single player work. But this is not a game to play as a single player. AIs never respond to clues the same as people do, and this is very obvious in this game. You will lose pretty much every game because of it, and that just makes it not fun.

As for multiplayer... Well, the Asmodee servers still suck, so I haven’t really bothered trying that. It probably would be more fun to play with actual people, and I might give it another go when the servers aren’t full of shit. Asmodee’s servers have been like this for years though so I don’t have many hopes for this.

I’m not sure if I would get the physical board game. Maybe if I can get it cheap enough, but I don’t think this is a game we would play often, and as such not immediately worth getting for us.

[gaming-pasq]

Review - Carcassonne: The Official Board Game

Two weeks ago, Humble had another Digital Tabletop Bundle, which I usually get when the focus is mostly on board games, because I love board games. And while it had a few games I already own, it also offered two games I had been wanting to try.

And then it also had Asmodee’s version of Carcassonne (Steam store link)... While I hadn’t played this version yet, because I play the physical board game often and played the previous digital version, I decided not to add it to my backlog. I still gave it a try though... and felt the need to write a review.

Carcassonne, the actual board game, is one of my favourite board games. It’s really easy to learn as it only has a few rules, but still tricky enough and with a wide amount of chance that no two games are ever the same.

During your turn, you take a tile and place it anywhere next to the already played tiles, anywhere you want, as long as field hits field, town hits town, and road hits road. Then you’re allowed to place one of your meeples on the tile you just played, either on a road, a town, monastery, or a field, and later (or sometimes immediately) score points when the road or town is completed, or the monastery is completely surrounded by eight other tiles, and you get your meeple back. The meeples on the field only score points at the end of the game though, depending on how many finished towns the field is touching, so you don’t get those meeples back during the game. You cannot place meeples on a road/town/field if you or anyone else already has a meeple on that same road/town/field.

And that’s basically it. There’s several tactics I didn’t explain, but the above should be enough to at least get a minimal understanding what the game is like.

This digital version, in its current state, is a disaster. The tutorial hardly explains the above properly. The AIs are weak as can be, and multiplayer is full of crashes and server issues. Both are sadly commom problems with anything Asmodee does digitally. Ticket to Ride has the same problems since Asmodee took over. At least with Pandemic they solved those problems: They simply didn’t add AIs and online multiplayer.

To me it looks like all the development money went solely into trying to make the game 3D... Which I honestly think makes it only look ugly and takes unnecessary processor energy. Luckily there is the option to have the game in classic 2D.

This game is also very expensive for a digitial version. At twice the price, you can easily get the physical copy which usually already includes the River expansion (which costs another $5 in the digital version) So if you have the people to play locally with, why bother with a digital version? And with online multiplayer mostly broken, and the AIs being terrible for single player, there is absolutely no reason (yet) to get this.

And the worst part? Before Asmodee took over and had to reinvent the digital game, there already was a digital version that worked better! The AIs sucked as well but not as much, and it had more expansions to offer, at a much cheaper deal. In November 2016, so not even two years ago, it was part of a different Humble Bundle for Android. And I still rather play that one on my phone than this weak-ass modee version.

[gaming-pasq]

Ittle Dew

(nominated by @snapdragonsoda)

With all the Humble Bundles I’ve bought, I’ve also ended up with a collection of Steam keys for games I already have and games I really don’t want. So I put those on a trade list here, and ended up trading one of those keys for Ittle Dew (Steam store link).

Ittle Dew had been on my wishlist for a little while, as it looked like the kind of goofy Legend of Zelda parody/clone I would enjoy playing. I also already had played Card City Nights by the same creators, and knew I actually quite dig their art style and humour.

Fin or Bin?

I was not wrong about enjoying playing this. The game is short though, and it took me less than two hours to finish it, and hardly an extra hour to get all the collectables. But the game is excellently made and balanced. There are three items you can get to go through the game, each with different attributes that can help you through the puzzles. But what really sells this game is that a lot of the puzzles are made so you can solve them in different ways, depending on which of the three items you have, and you can reach the final boss with any two of the three items. It makes the game interesting enough to play it again, trying a different route, figuring out how to solve a puzzle differently.

I liked it enough I’m even trying to get the speedrun achievement (finish under 15 minutes). And I generally hate doing speedruns.

[gaming-pasq]

Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures

(nominated by @snapdragonsoda)

One more from the Telltale Games Humble Bundle, this time a game that is no longer available. I got the bundle in May of 2013, so it still included the Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures game, but as of January 14th, 2014, Telltale doesn’t have the distribution rights anymore to the Wallace & Gromit intellectual property, so it was removed from stores.

As with many Telltale games, it’s an episode click-and-point adventure game, this time starring Wallace & Gromit, the clay animated stars from Aardman. These animations were part of my childhood, and I loved watching them. I also was always impressed with how good it looked as clay animation is damn tough to do. So yeah, the games being part of the Telltale bundle made me help decide to get that bundle. The game obviously uses computer generated animation though, but they did a good job making it look like they are of clay.

Fin or Bin?

The game exists out of four episodes, and this was from the time before DLC so each episode is its own game. I played and finished the first episode, Fright of the Bumblebees, and thought it was pretty good. The humour is in the style fit for Wallace & Gromit. They used voice actors that worked with Aardman, though due to age and health of the original VA Peter Sallis, Wallace was voiced by the back-up VA Ben Whitehead (who is the main voice of Wallace nowadays as Sallis retired and then died last year.) The puzzles were interesting and never over-complicated, and the animation was fitting. The episode was fairly short though, easily done in less than 2 hours, and I assume the other three will be similar. But that’s really the only complaint I have, and I’ll probably play the other episodes as well eventually.

It’s a bit of a shame the game is no longer available to get, but there are still some Steam keys floating around here and there if you really want it. Or do it old-school and buy it on a... what’s-it-called-again... a “CD-rom”?

[gaming-pasq]

Finished: The Talos Principle - Road to Gehenna

So I haven’t exactly been posting much about my “To Finish” list. Frankly, I keep playing the games from my backlog challenge lately and simply finish those already, which has been counting for my hour a week towards finishing games...

But the past week I actually did play, and finish, a game that has been on my To Finish list for a little while: The Talos Principle (Steam store link) or rather, its DLC Road to Gehenna (Steam store link) as I already had finished the main game over a year ago.

In the Talos Principle, you wake up as a robot in a garden, hearing a voice from... your god? Tasking you with solving puzzles to see how good you are at problem solving. For some reason. But while solving puzzles, you figure out bit by bit not everything is what it seems...

This game has the most challenging puzzle game I’ve ever played. I’ve never had to think as hard figuring out how to solve puzzles this many times in a single game, and it’s what I love about the game. The story is intriguing as well, but can be a little too philosophical for my taste. And just like the puzzles, the story makes you think. There are plenty of secrets to find, and additional puzzles to collect extra stuff in order to unlock additional endings. It’s a masterfully done game, and belongs to my top favourite games ever.

Once I had finished the game, I immediately put the DLC on my wishlist which I then bought during the winter sales. But then I got a little too busy with other stuff and my backlog and didn’t really get around to playing it until now.

I can’t exactly tell much about the Road to Gehenna without spoiling the main game storyline. You definitely need to finish the main game first. But the puzzles are as challenging as ever, with more hidden stuff to find (if you want to) and another intriguing storyline. I had a blast playing it, and am happy I finally got around to it.

[gaming-pasq]

Day of the Tentacle Remastered

(nominated by @babybahamut)

After my comment on BB’s backlog review of Day of the Tentacle (Steam store link), he decided I might as well give it try already. I got the game from the giant Humble Freedom Bundle, not exactly knowing if I really wanted it. But it looked interesting enough so I added it to my list.

It’s considered a classic, with the original having been made in 1993, and you can tell it’s from that era. The art, the “humour”, and it being a point-and-click puzzle adventure.

Fin or Bin?

It took a little time to get used to the ‘90s cartoony art-style but eventually it didn’t bother me. I’ve endured worse art in games. The humour was more often miss than hit, with every single character being a dimwitted idiot, and the dialogues could be quite dragging at times. Yeah, this game definitely doesn’t have the charm and wit that Tim Schafer’s later game Grim Fandango has. The five years difference and experience probably helped for the latter game.

But the puzzle element was actually quite good, one of the best I’ve seen in point-and-click games. There’s a lot of “find an item, then use it somewhere else” but none of it ever felt like really over the top. A few things were a bit farfetched, but still fitting in the setting of the game. And some things were tricky to figure out, but nothing ever too tricky. The puzzle element is what kept me playing, and I ended up finishing the game. 100%.

[gaming-pasq]

Life is Strange

(final choice out of 10 random rolls)

Yes, another one from that same Square Enix humble bundle, the dice decided to roll 3 games from it out of the 100+ options... This time a game I couldn’t decide for the longest time if it really should have been on my backlog list, and the reason I waited for it to be my final choice of the 10 rolls I made.

I only own Episode 1 of Life is Strange (Steam store link, ep. 1 is free) so not having the full game was like... do I really want to play it then? Also, when I put it on my list, this episode wasn’t free yet, but now it is, so technically I felt like I didn’t have to add it to my list at all anymore.

But at the same time, this is a game I was genuinely am interested in playing... I just don’t like only owning part of a game (and why I also generally avoid demos.) Episodic games are a curse and I really hate the trend of these things.

But yeah, I decided to give it a try after much debating. The praise for this game is everywhere, and it does have timetravel elements which I have a love-hate relation with and am always interested in.

Fin or Bin?

Well, I finished episode 1 in one playthrough, so I finished what I own. Will I buy the other episodes and play them? Probably, but only when they’re on at least 50% clearance.

The game is fun, but it also has its problems that really annoy me. I like the slow pace. The time traveling part is acceptable, and it’s a very good way to actually let you go through all the “make a decision” options before making an actual decision on what you want to do to influence the game later. And I like trying to spot everything and finding the small things you can take pictures of (which are the achievements.) The art is nice, but the animation and voice acting combination is terrible. The mouth movements aren’t lined up at all and this is why voice acting often bothers me. If you cannot animate it right, don’t have voice acting. Plus a lot of the lines lack any emotion and just sound like someone read the script out loud. The animation is problematic in other ways too. The main character uses the “moving her bangs out of the way” animation too often but what’s worse is the hair doesn’t even move! If you include an animation like that, at least make the hair move then! Now it only distracted me every time it happens, and it happened a lot.

All this makes the game subpar to me and not worth the full money. But the story and gameplay is interesting and, as demos do, it makes me want to know how it continues. So I will end up buying the rest someday and finishing it completely, most likely.

EDIT 8 hours after writing and queuing this post: So... the game actually ended going on sale the day I wrote this, at 75% off. Amazing. So yeah, I own the full game now and will play through it.

I originally had queued this post with the intention to have it post on the 22nd, to put some distance between my posts, but this coincidence somewhat forced me to post it now already.

[gaming-pasq]

F.E.A.R.

(ninth choice out of 10 random rolls)

In November of 2013, there was the Humble WB Games Bundle, which I solely bought at $5 for Scribblenauts Unlimited (which I also still haven’t played...), and there was literally nothing else in that bundle that I cared about. I even didn’t bother putting anything else on my backlog list of these games, except for the F.E.A.R. series (Steam store link, first game and DLCs only available within bundle). I decided this series looked interesting enough to at least give it a try.

It’s a “military” FPS and I generally don’t care for these kind of FPS games, but this ads the creepy horror elements of the classic haunted shows and such, and that does make it more interesting to me.

Fin or Bin?

I couldn’t even give it the full hour. This is just not my kind of game. Into the bin it goes.

The horror is good, the AIs are terrifyingly good (they spot you so fast), the art actually looks fine for an older game, and I understand why people praise it. But it’s not my game. The FPS part is the complete opposite of what I like. You actually need to be careful and hide at times and aim correctly like crazy or die. I die. A lot. It’s not fun. Either let me avoid combat completely (full stealth games are fine!) or allow me to storm the opponents all the time (why I loved playing gunzerker in Borderlands) but not this “shoot - hide - aim perfectly - shoot - hide.” It does give you the option to storm the opponents at times, using some hightened sense thing that slows down time (...which is actually very familiar, as the gunzerker in Borderlands has that too) but you still gotta aim well and either kill everyone or go back into hiding within that time period or you’re dead, again. I gave up after dying too many times. And I was playing on the moderate setting, the 2nd lowest of four settings.

Reviews pretty much all say the first one and its DLCs are the best games in the series. The sequels (while still good according to many) are weak compared to it, in pretty much every aspect. Because of that, I decided to simply bin the whole series rather than just the first game.

[gaming-pasq]

Swords and Soldiers HD

(eight choice out of 10 random rolls)

Time for a game from the very first Humble Bundle I bought. Swords and Soldiers (Steam store link) was part of the 4th Android bundle, back in November 2012, which also had Steam keys for all the games. But you can totally tell that this game was meant for mobile devices. It still plays fine on Steam, though.

It’s a fairly simple side-scrolling tower defense game, with the kind of humour a child would find funny but an adult just rolls it eyes at. You play as one of the three races (Vikings, Aztecs, or Chinese) and create armies that try to destroy the other side’s armies, with the help of some spells you can use and some towers for defense.

Fin or Bin?

I played through the storymode of the Vikings, and it wasn’t all that bad. But I do feel like I’m too old for this game. The art, the humour, the gameplay... it’s definitely directed more towards children, to keep them busy on a phone while going out somewhere. So I think I will bin this one for now. It is one of those games that if I happen to be in the mood for it, I might take it out of the bin and play a bit, but I’m not intending to truly finish this game.

[gaming-pasq]

Murdered: Soul Suspect™

(seventh choice out of 10 random rolls)

My rolls have decided to really group the games, as Murdered: Soul Suspect™ (Steam store link) was another one from the Square Enix Humble Bundle I bought, which also had Yosumin! in it that I recently played.

I never paid any attention to this game before the roll. And I think it’s mostly because on Steam, the game title is in ALL CAPS and that alone just scares me away from a game. Otherwise I probably would have given this game a chance much sooner, because once I read what it’s about I was totally sold on giving it a shot!

You play the ghost of a cop who just got killed, trying to find closure and figure out who killed you, using the gifts only ghosts can do! Sounds just like Ghost Trick, a game I adore! Oh, but then this game also has the “Collect EVERYTHING” disease that a lot of people hate but I love to do. I didn’t need to know more, I booted the game right up.

Fin or Bin?

I finished it 100%, and although it had more than a few issues, I liked it a lot. The game itself is fairly short once you take out the “collect everything” part (which is almost entirely optional) and I can see why people get annoyed with it. It should have had less of that and much more of the “can you solve my death mystery?” side quests of which there are only like four of and only appear near the start of the game. The story isn’t bad at all, but a little problematic in that you are figuring things out the cops should have figured out already. I mean, most of it still wouldn’t have made sense to the cops (cause ghosts) but they should have figured out some stuff already. But it’s not a bad story at all otherwise! The cut scenes can be a bit dragging and sadly there is no skip option for several of them. I was amazed by the art though. It is realistic yet not overly.

I had some issues getting the last collectable achievements because I found out too late that you cannot get back into a certain place once you went to the final area. I was missing ONE collectable from that place... (out of 242) so I had to quickly play through most of the game again to just get that one thing. Luckily, the Steam achievement still counts all the ones you collected in a previous file so you can just focus on collecting the ones you missed and really go through most of the game fast that way.

[gaming-pasq]

[error, no queued post found]

So I meant to queue a few more blogs but I never got around to writing them up before I got too busy to do so, so have this little post instead telling you that I owe you a few more posts of backlog games I have actually played. They will come next week most likely. (Or whenever next week is after this queued post gets posted.)

[gaming-pasq]

Aqua Kitty - Milk Mine Defender

(sixth choice out of 10 random rolls)

Look at that, the dice rolled me another game from that same cat themed Humble Bundle! Aqua Kitty - Milk Mine Defender (Steam store link) was the second game of that bundle I wasn’t sure about whether I actually wanted to play it.

Another arcade-style game, this time it’s a shoot-em-upper, which generally go straight to my bin. But hey, they tried to make it cat themed, so I guess I gotta give it a try, and the pixel art does look nice.

In this game, you’re piloting a submarine, defending the kitty workers that are getting milk out an underwater mines from the robotic jellyfish that try to kidnap them. No, I’m not making up that sentence. And it’s a far fetch to making this cat-themed...

Fin or Bin?

I had a lot of trouble getting started, as I was playing with a keyboard first, and couldn’t even beat the first level. Switching to a controller made all the difference! The levels are tough, but short enough that even if you fail, it doesn’t take too much to try again, and the first 10 levels didn’t take too much to beat them. It gets much harder at level 11 and beyond though.

For some reason, this game actually keeps me playing. I cannot pinpoint why. I somewhat reached a wall in normal mode, and while I think I could keep going it will take a lot from me, more than I’m willing to put into this game. But, I’m considering to finish it in easy mode. There are only 25 levels, and I went through the first 18 fast on easy. Needing a little break from it, but once this blog post goes up, I might already have finished it.

(I have been playing extra and queuing a few posts because I will be very busy the first two weeks of August, and expect not to have time to play nor blog.)

[gaming-pasq]

Pix the Cat

(fifth choice out of 10 random rolls)

In June of 2015, Humble had a cat bundle. It took me two seconds to decide to get it. I wonder why...

One of the games in this bundle was Pix the Cat (Steam store link), an arcade-style game being a mix of Snake and Pac-Man. And I immediately knew I wasn’t gonna like this game. So I never bothered playing it until now. After all, I got the bundle for literally every other game in it.

The art is gorgeous though and totally my style, heavily influenced from the classic Felix the Cat cartoons (which is also what the name of the game is based on.) The art is what made me decide to actually put it in my backlog and not to immediately bin it.

Fin or Bin?

But yeah, after trying it out, I am certainly binning this one. It does a great job at what it is. But I hate these kind of arcade games. I don’t like the ones where speed and turning at the right moment are the key factors, and it doesn’t help at all that once you’re dead, it’s the end, and you start over from the very start again, in true arcade style.

Great game for people who love this kind of games. But not for me.

[gaming-pasq]

Little Inferno

(fourth choice out of 10 random rolls)

Little Inferno (Steam store link) is another game from the 8th Humble Indie Bundle I got in May 2013. This was one of those games I’ve been wanting to play, but waited for it to get achievements.

It never got achievements.

So I never played it.

Anyway, Little Inferno is an indie “game” where you buy things and then burn them. Not much else to it, so basically not much of a game. Sure, there’s a little bit of a puzzle element in it by trying to figure out all the combos, but they don’t progress the game or anything.

Fin or Bin?

And sadly, without actual goals, this game is just not for me. I need something to keep me motivated, and often achievements are what do the trick. Trying to figure out the combos was almost enough to keep me playing, but then the money limits, and especially the timers, make it slow and tedious to go through it all, and I just want to do other stuff if I have to wait and wait. So true to the game’s spirit, into the fire this one goes.