February 9, 2024 - Day 405 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 441

Game: Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed

Platform: Steam
Released: Aug 31, 2022
Installed: Feb 9, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 24m

Rating: 3 - OK

Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is a third person open world adventure game. It's the third game in February's Humble Choice bundle.

Unlike Scorn, I actually had DAH!2-R on my wishlist. However, what I didn't know is that while it's a sequel to 2020's Destroy All Humans!, it turns out that Destroy All Humans! was a remake of Destroy All Humans! released in 2005, and DAH!2-R is a remake of the sequel Destroy All Humans! 2.

DAH!2-R is set in 1969, and you're playing as a clone of the original Furon invader, Cryptosporidium-137.

As the now-President of The United States, you find yourself under attack by the KGB, having simultaneously destroyed your mothership in orbit, and waves of KGB agents launching a direct ground assault on you, while you're attending a music festival in San Francisco. Of course.

It's feels much like a pastiche of alien invasion movies of the 1950's & 1960's, and it's kind of goofy fun.

Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is:

3: OK

February 6, 2024 - Day 402 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 438

Game: Paradise Killer

Platform: Steam
Released: Sep 5, 2020
Installed: Feb 2, 2024
Unplayed: 4d
Playtime: 21m

Rating: 4 - Good?

Paradise Killer is a first person open world detective mystery visual novel... thing?

It's really quite unique, with a kind-of vaporwave-ish aesthetic and in the 20 minutes I spent with it, it left me intrigued.

Paraduse Killer is so out of the box that I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's:

4: Good?

#ParadiseKiller #FirstPerson #OpenWorld#Adventure #VisualNovel #Mystery #Detective #Gaming #ProjectONG

December 25, 2023 - Day 359 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 381

Game: American Fugitive

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 21, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 18, 2023
Unplayed: 7d
Playtime: 20m

American Fugitive is a top-down 3D open-world action-adventure game.

Feeling a lot like early GTA games, you play as a petty thief who's been framed for the murder of his father. After breaking out of prison you set out to clear your name.

By committing other crimes.

After escaping from prison, you need to avoid the police until you escape from the general area of the prison. Apparently, they're looking for a red-haired bearded man in a yellow prison jumpsuit, and not a red-headed bearded man in a white shirt and blue jeans (that I just stole off someone's clothesline).

Graphically, it's well executed, although I found the steering of vehicles to be incredibly twitchy.

One of weird little things that became clear to me this year is that I really don't enjoy games where I'm playing as a criminal.

A game that expects me to commit crimes against NPCs portrayed as innocent bystanders, is something that just rubs me the wrong way, and as potentially interesting as the setup for this game is, I just felt kind of icky afterwards.

Also, playing as a male character still continues to make me feel disconnected from what's happening in the game.

Unfortunately for American Fugitive, that just leaves me feeling pretty:

2: Meh

November 16, 2023 - Day 320 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 339

Game: Homefront: The Revolution

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 17, 2016
Installation Date: Sep 11, 2022
Unplayed: 431d (1y2m5d)
Playtime: 29m

Homefront: The Revolution is an open-world FPS reboot of 2011's Homefront, a game I reviewed on the 5th of January.

The setting is much the same; a unified Korea has invaded the United States, and you find yourself as a member of the resistance seeking to fight back against a superior military force.

It was only when I started playing it that it started to feel familiar.

Of my 29 minutes playtime, about half of that was just watching things happen on screen.

The biggest problem though is that it's not a game that's aged well. The game mechanics themselves seem totally fine, it's an issue of timing.

Right now, while Israel's government commits war crimes against innocent Palestinians while claiming self defence against Hamas, and the war by Russia against Ukraine continues, and with an ascendent US fascist movement painting themselves as the resistance, this game does not feel like a game.

When I play a game, it's partially to escape from the world, not to remind me of it, and Homefront: The Revolution does exactly that, so it all feels a bit:

2: Meh

#HomefrontTheRevolution #OpenWorld #FPS #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365
#NewPlay

September 26, 2023 - Day 269 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 289

Game: Rage 2

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Installation Date: Nov 22, 2022
Unplayed: 308d (10m4d)
Playtime: 32m

Rage 2 is an open-world post-apocalyptic FPS.

Do you like things that go "splorch" when you shoot them? If you answered 'yes', Rage 2 might be the game for you!

Rage 2 is a sequel to Rage, a post-apocalyptic FPS. I played 27 minutes of Rage back in 2022, and found it a bit repetitive and grindy, and visually it was many shades of brown, grey, and black.

Rage 2 is BRIGHT! There's a woman with a blue mohawk and white facepaint screaming out of a pink and yellow background on the Steam header, like an escapee from Mad Max Fury Road.

The game is set about 30 years after the end of Rage, and the antagonist from Rage who wanted to take over the world is back, and he's pissed.

...and mostly robotic. He's been living underground and has amassed a ragtag army of mutants to... take over the world.

Where Rage felt grindy and repetitive even within the first 30 minutes, Rage 2 felt more... fun. However, I've only really completed what is essentially the intro, and gotten my first vehicle and a handful of quests, so maybe it will turn out to be less fun as time goes by.

In any case, I now have an alternative post-apocalyptic shoot-and-splorch game to Outriders.

Rage 2 seems:

4: Good

#Rage2 #FPS #OpenWorld #PostApocalyptic #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 14, 2023 - Day 226 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 246

Game: Submerged

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 4, 2015
Library Date: May 13, 2023
Unplayed: 93d (3m1d)
Playtime: 24m

Submerged is an third-person post-apocalyptic open-world exploration game. You play as a young girl, Miku, who is trying to save her brother's life, and to do so, must sail around a submerged city, climbing the buildings and exploring the ruins to locate crates containing survival items.

It's very pretty, but based on my movement through the game so far, it seems like it will be a reasonably short game that won't outstay its welcome.

I think the sail->search->climb->find gameplay loop could get pretty old pretty quickly.

As you move through the story, you uncover pieces of Miku & her brother's story, and the story of what happened to the city in the form of pictographs, and as you explore, there are 60 collectables to find.

Submerged is:

3: OK

July 27, 2023 - Day 208 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 227

Game: The Eternal Cylinder

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 14, 2022
Library Date: Mar 14, 2023
Unplayed: 135d (4m13d)
Playtime: 22m

The Eternal Cylinder is a weird game. It's a weird open-world-ish adventure-slash-survival-slash-puzzle game where you play as a little creature called a Trebhum, and you can consume stuff around you in the environment in order to evolve.

Which you need to do, to try and stay ahead of the giant unavoidable titular "Eternal Cylinder", which literally crushes everything in it's path.

Including you, if you can't get ahead of it, and to one of the towers dotted around the landscape that stop the cylinder. Temporarily.

The alien landscape reminds me of the planets in No Man's Sky, but the weirdest thing on the planet's surface might be the Trebhum. These little spehroidal* creatures start out with two eyes and a snout, which which they consume (left mouse button) and expel (right mouse button) things they find around the environment.

Some of these things help the little Trebhum evolve new abilities. Like suddenly growing legs with which to jump and run away from the giant, world-crushing cylinder.

Fortunately the game autosaves a lot because, y'all gonna need it.

All the while, the game is narrated by a friendly & gentle Englishman (who's actually a New Zealand actor, Peter Hadyen), guiding you through the things you need to do to survive.

The only reason I stopped playing was because I had my late work shift and a co-worker waiting on me to make the actual phone calls due to my lack of actual voice, otherwise I would have continued playing.

The Eternal Cylinder is crushingly:

4: Good

June 25, 2023 - Day 176 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 195

Game: Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 13, 2018
Library Date: Sep 7, 2019
Unplayed: 1387d (3y9m18d)
Playtime: 1h34m

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a first-person open world RPG set in medieval Bohemia. You play Henry, a young man set on a mission of vengeance.

This was a game that I really knew nothing about, that was part of the August 2019 Humble Bundle. After I disappointed @bluntelk by not enjoying ToeJam & Earl, he asked if I'd played this.

I had not, and since I owned this on one Steam, away I went.

Once again, going into the game without knowing anything about it proved somewhat beneficial to the setup of the story. RPGs often follow the pattern of the Hero's Journey.

Henry's life in this bucolic village in Bohemia was obviously not going to be the whole of the game. Had I read the logline for the game on the Steam page, it gives away the catalysing event that sets Henry on his journey, so it was devastating to experience it first-hand, but also gave me a fire in my bones that I might have lacked knowing what I was in for.

In terms of gameplay, it's a good looking game for a game released five years ago, & built in Crytek's CryEngine.

Will I complete it? I'm not sure. Statistically, it's unlikely. I've started multiple Assassin's Creed games, and haven't completed any of them. I was hours into Cyberpunk 2077 before discovering I hadn't even completed the prologue. In all my time gaming, the only open-world game I've even completed is FarCry 5.

There's also the issue of playing a male protagonist. When I play a game with a female protagonist I feel a sense of connection that's noticeably absent with male protagonists; in fact, recognising this was another small piece in understanding the puzzle that is myself.

However, the story did pique my interest, and it might be one of those games that draws me back, so I'm going to sit with it for a while.

Overall, (and this should make @bluntelk happy), I think Kingdom Come: Deliverance is:

4: Good

May 28, 2023 - Day 148 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 164

Game: Sable

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 23, 2021
Library Date: Mar 10, 2023
Unplayed: 79d (2m18d)
Playtime: 1h55m

Sable is a third-person open-world adventure & exploration game. Unlike... any open world game I've played, as far as I can recall, it has no combat.

Sable is the coming of age story of the eponymous main character, and leaving her clan to embark on her "gliding".

Apparently inspired by Breath of the Wild, Sable's quest takes her climbing and solving puzzles across her home world of Midden; seemingly a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Sable rides her hoverbike from destination to destination, picking up quests.

Her goal is to collect a series of masks, which (if I understand correctly), will ultimately lead her to a ceremony to choose a final mask, which seemingly represents her permanent role within her society.

Sable has a quite lovely cel-shaded graphic style with a dynamic colour scheme that changes based on a day & night cycle, and has an almost ethereal soundscape.

Sable is:

5: Excellent

Apr 27, 2023 - Day 117 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 132

Game: Phoning Home

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 8, 2017
Library Date: Mar 13, 2018
Unplayed: 1871d (5y1m14d)
Playtime: 95m

Phoning Home is a third-person open-world robot survival sim. It is also free on Steam (which is why there's a link at the end).

Phoning Home was developed by ION LANDS, who went on to create Cloudpunk, (one of my all-time favourite games).

I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of sandbox survival games. Valheim left me cold, and V Rising genuinely left me regretting spending the money on it.

Phoning Home, on the other hand, is a narrative driven survival game, which takes the exploration and construction and gives it purpose.

I only intended to play this for 15 minutes before work, and was an hour late starting work, so deep did it suck me in and make me want to keep playing, and further the story of the cute little WALL-E inspired robot, ION.

To the point that the new Warframe expansion The Duviri Paradox dropped today (it's free too!), and if I'm to have any hope of giving it a fair go, I'll need to play that first, because otherwise I suspect I'll be up all night playing Phoning Home.

Which means this is:

5: Excellent

#PhoningHome #OpenWorld #ThirdPerson #Survival #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

https://store.steampowered.com/app/431650/Phoning_Home/

Apr 24, 2023 - Day 114 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 128

Game: Sunset Overdrive

Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Nov 17, 2018
Library Date: Apr 24, 2023
Unplayed: 0d (0d)
Playtime: 45m

Sunset Overdrive was on my wishlist for several years, & it's on sale on Steam right now for $7.11.

However, it's in a bundle in which I own the other title, dropping the price to $6.26, which seemed too easy.

Still, past me hasn't always made the best decisions with my waitlist, and my eldest has it in his shared Steam library, so I installed it from there & played it.

I spent the six bucks.

Sunset Overdrive feels like an open world mashup of Borderlands, Dying Light, & Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, by way of iZombie.

The core premise of monsters created by drinking an energy drink at a launch party feels like it was lifted wholesale from iZombie; however, Sunset Overdrive originally released on Xbox in 2014, with iZombie being developed in 2014 & released in 2015, which is interesting timing, to say the least.

The bright, hyperkinetic gameplay involving grinding rails & acrobatics while shooting monsters is refreshing, & leans into aggressive offensive gameplay, rather than playing defense like a cover shooter.

It doesn't take itself seriously, breaking the fourth wall, & if you've got a spare 7 bucks, it's worth the buy.

Sunset Overdrive is:

4: Good

Apr 23, 2023 - Day 113 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 124

Game: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Oct 1, 2014
Library Date: Mar 13, 2018
Unplayed: 1867d (5y1m10d)
Playtime: 74m

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open-world action-adventure (some light RPG elements) that is, surprisingly, set in Middle-earth, between The Hobbit and LotR.

However, the most surprising thing about this game for me, other than the ~20 minutes of introduction video, was how it does not feel like a game that's almost 9 years old.

You play as a Gondor Ranger that's been murdered and trapped between life and death, and... look, I'm not sure what the end-game is meant to be, but I was having a hell of a time just sneaking around and kill Uruk-hai.

Combat is fun (if a little counter-intuitive, being that space is "run" and left-shift is "sneak".)

Sneaking up behind an unaware Uruk and shanking them with the dagger is satisfying, as is straight-up swordplay.

You can also "stealth" into wraith mode, and put an arrow into into a distant orc, and watch them drop with a satisfying whistle-and-thunk.

This game feels like motivation to keep playing through library, to discover gems like this that I'd missed completely.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is:

4: Good

Feb 2, 2023 - Day 33 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 40

Game: Agents of Mayhem
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Aug 16, 2017
Library Date: May 26, 2020
Unplayed: 982 days (2y8m7d)
Playtime: 41m

From the developers who brought you Saints Row, Saints Row 2, Saints Row The Third, the over-the-top Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell, and Saints Row (a reboot of Saints Row that shares a name and little else) comes a repetitive "open-world" action-adventure game vaguely connected to Saints Row (but not the reboot) that is to action-adventure games what Hush Puppies are to high fashion.

You play as a squad of three characters, that you can switch between mid-fight. Like Trine, but somehow less fun.

The game is set in a largely deserted, but very pretty, representation of a futuristic version of Seoul. The gameplay is smooth, the mechanics proficient, the characterisation and voiceovers are well done.

I played through two missions; all the pieces of something entertaining are there, yet somehow fail to mesh into something I want to keep playing.

I can't put my finger on what's missing, just that it is. A little less polish, and this would be "meh", but for me Agents of Mayhem just scrapes across the line to:

3: OK