I play a bunch of junk.

I want to play 52 games in 2015. I want to keep up with them. That's all.

[spoonplays-blog]

02/52 - The Witness (PS4)

Thekla, Inc. (2016)

If you’re into games, there’s very little chance that you haven’t already heard about The Witness at this point. I spent roughly 45 hours plucking away at the puzzles in this game (and only completed around half of them!), and all I really want to do is wipe my brain of any trace of it so I can do it all over again for the first time. Seriously, the puzzles are that good. They are so good that I bought a pad of graph paper and cut out dozens of geometric shapes just so I could physically manipulate pieces in an attempt to make the puzzles make more sense in my brain.

I have absolutely no idea what the story in this game is or if there's even one there to discover, though there certainly were parts where the narrative seemed like it could be heading up it’s own ass. In the end, the puzzles themselves were good enough that I didn’t even care. The Witness set out to teach the player how to interact with a world of rules and regulations with no guidance at all, and for me at least, it was immensely successful. I look forward to picking it back up this summer and tackling more of those panels I missed, though I might be close to hitting a point where the puzzles are literally too difficult for me.

[spoonplays-blog]

01/52 - Grow Home (PC)

Ubisoft Reflections (2015)

After all the praise it got in game of the year discussions, I expected to like this one a whole lot more than I did. Something about it just didn’t click with me and I often felt as if I was fighting against this seemingly drunk little robot pleading with him to just keep climbing and please god, don’t fall off the stupid moaning plant again. Still, this game has style and plenty of charm, but I just spent too much time being frustrated at the physics to really enjoy any of it.

The game eludes to their being more content, but I will unlikely return.

Launch trailer below

[spoonplays-blog]

52 games in one year.

I want to play 52 games in one year. That’s...a lot of games.

This is something that I tried to do last last year but failed miserably (pretty sure I didn’t even get halfway there), but as I am nothing if not naive about reality, I am going to try again.

The Rules:

All games count. They don’t have to be console games. They can totally be mobile games. Hell, if I play a board game a whole bunch, I might add it here too, because that’s my prerogative and the points don’t matter anyway.

Play Concurrently. I don’t have to finish one before moving onto another, and if I want to play every Final Fantasy from I to X off and on over there course of the year, well, I guess that’s a good thing to note on the coroner’s report.

Need only end in 2016. There are games I started playing in 2015 that I will absolutely finish in 2016. These count because my rules. 

Don’t have to complete. Some games flat out don’t have what you might call an ‘end’. I’m not going to force myself to finish something that’s garbage. I’m not going to suffer through a game that I’m not feeling. I will give a game I’ve picked a fair shake and at least try it for a substantial block of time, and since I’m picking games that I’ve actually wanted to play, there’s a good chance I’ll finish a solid portion of them. I’ll probably note it. Which leads to the final rule...

Have something to say. These are video games, and while I don’t expect I’ll be forming up some deep bullshit about the human condition, I think it’s absolutely reasonable to expect at least a small blurb of my thoughts.

There’s very little chance I’ll finish this. But I intend to try. This also isn’t an idea I came up with, it was shamelessly stolen from a thread on Neogaf, I just like a platform like this better for tracking as opposed to comments on a message board thread.