Be Excellent To Each Other

81. Doors and Rooms 3
82. Escape Funky Island
83. Superliminal
84. Donut County
85. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs 2
86. The Witch's Isle
87. Planet Alpha: 2D puzzle-platformer with stealth elements and an ability to control the day/night cycle of the game in order to progress. Sadly absolutely everything about that sentence is massively over-selling the game because 99% of it's just "hold right to progress" with some incredibly basic puzzling thrown in seemingly just to slow you down. It's jaw-dropping fucking beautiful for most of it's run time which is perhaps why it's not getting the slagging it deserves in user reviews but even that just becomes background to the monotony of the actual gameplay. I'm genuinely amazed that at no point during the development no one noticed that great sections of it had you doing literally nothing but stabbing the jump button every now and again without ever even having to let go of the left stick. Bizarre.

44) INSIDE (Xbox)

What can I say about this amazing game that hasn’t already been said?

Did you know it was only made because of co-funding from the European Union?

That’ll do. That’ll do, Pig.

81. Doors and Rooms 3
82. Escape Funky Island
83. Superliminal
84. Donut County
85. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs 2
86. The Witch's Isle
87. Planet Alpha
88. Doors: Awakening: another Snapbreak puzzler for Android that has you swiping around bite-sized levels poking and pressing at stuff to open a central door. Rarely challenging but polished, pretty and satisfying.
89. Metrico+: a puzzle-platformer that started out life on the Vita before being ported to other platforms.

The aesthetic is 'dreamy 70s Excel charts' with moving bar graphs and pie charts often making up the level furniture. The actual gameplay is interesting in that each level mixes up the 'inputs' required to progress. Maybe on one level I need to shoot myself to move one gate while purposely falling down a whole to move a second one; before exiting via a final platform that moved depending on how many time I'd hit the jump button. On the next level perhaps things only moved when I walked right.

New elements are introduced at points (like the final level set gives you the ability to switch places with any enemy on screen) but the core of the game remains the same: experiment with different trivial actions to see what reacts, then manipulate those reactions to get out. This means the levels mostly boil down to working out how to move without doing something e.g how do I get from (a) to (b) without jumping more than twice or firing more than two shots because doing so puts a platform permanently out of reach.

All of which sounds pretty good, and it's well enough implemented for sure, but I did find myself getting bored of it's schtick before it's four or so hours were done. Despite the new stuff it sometimes adds in there's something very samey about the various levels and only the odd time did I feel like I was being asked to do something genuinely new with its tools.

I need 8 games to complete by years end but I’m struggling to get interested in anything at all. I must have booted up a half dozen games last night and couldn’t get into any of them.

Quick Beex! Recommend me some decent games that might only last a hour or two that won’t bore me to tears. If I can get 8 of them I’ll try and smash the lot.

Firewatch is pretty short.

That’s a good one. People been banging on about that for ages.

7 more please.

You can get to the end credits of the Binding of Isaac in under an hour

Cannon Fodder

The Return of the Obra Dinn
The Stanley Parable
Gunpoint
Jazzpunk
To the Moon
The Unfinished Swan

I’ve done Binding of Isaac previously and one of the games I was playing recently was Gonner: Blueberry Edition which was another roguelike. To be fair, that’s the most likely to get played.

I don’t have an Amiga set up for Cannon Fodder and, frankly, anything that requires me to turn on the PC and do stuff to it make a game run is very unlikely to get played.

I’ve finished them all except The Return of the Obra Dinn. How long is that? Hang on, is that on any of the consoles though?

Do you have a Switch? Donut County is pretty short.

Also, the Aladdin/Lion King double pack. You can complete those in about 30 minutes and it would count as two games.

Yeah, that’s a good one! I quite fancy that Donut hole one.

Firewatch
Donut County
Aladdin
Lion King
Obra Dinn (if it’s on console)

Yes, was released on consoles in October. Haven’t played it yet so not sure exactly how long.

Untitled goose game is short.

Donut County is out on pretty much all platforms. You'd smash through it as it's very easy, but I loved it because swallowing stuff up with a hole of ever increasing size is just an incredibly compelling mechanic.

This is coming to Game Pass next week for freez, I heard, so that’ll do nicely.

About 8 hours apparently:

https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=61882

45) Firewatch (PS4)

For a walking simulator, this is very good. I wouldn’t be half as interested if not for that brilliantly simplistic introduction sequence (that was sooo heavy and got me right into the fiction immediately) and the fantastic VA. Delilah was great.

I actually became much less interested in the story after stumbling upon the comms base when it should have been pulling me in. It never really built up to a satisfying crescendo after that (following the annoying bleeping machine should have been ditched in favour of something else. Anything else) but I thought the ending was exactly what was needed.

I did love that the watch tower on the title screen was Delilah’s rather than your own.

Imma give it...6/10. It would be a 7 but the technicals fucked me off too. 30 FPS? Bags of stuttering? Pop in? I mean, come on, it was hardly the most taxing looking game; sort your fucking shit out.

Smooth as silk on PC

You probably spent more time setting it up than playing it though.

Part of the fun. I’m not into instant gratification.

Weird, I think of you when I want to delay gratification. Indefinitely.

How gratifying!

How gratuitous!

46) Roundabout (PS4)

I was enjoying this then stopped for some reason. Anyway, turns out I was only 4 missions from the end so I just ploughed through it. Like your mum.

It’s that game where you’re in a limo that’s constantly spinning around do a crazy taxi driving folks around in an isometric-ish viewpoint. The best and only reason to keep playing are the live action passengers FMV. They’re so funny and wacky. It’s all tongue in cheek and all the actors (which I strongly suspect are the devs and their friends) are just charmingly stupid. I kinda wish the game was more fun. Ah well, it was on PSN a while back so if you’ve got it just play 30 minutes for the lulz. Who knows, you might enjoy it.

My last trophy was 7/12/2018. That was some break.

1. The Last Of Us Remastered.

I'm off to a slow start......

I also played Roundabout and then stopped, despite quite enjoying it.

1: Prey 2017(PC)
2: The Room(PC)
3: The Room 2 (PC)
4: Night in the woods (PC)
5: Ghost of a tale (PC)
6: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii (U))
7: Baba is You (Switch)
8. Phoenix Wright ace attorney (PC)
9. Phoenix Wright ... and Justice for all (PC)
10. Tales of escape (PC)
11. Escape first (PC)
12. Escape First 2 (PC)
13. Curious Cases (PC)
14. The Experiment: Escape Room (PC)
15. Phoenix Wright Tables and tribulations (PC)
16. Untitled Goose Game (Switch)
17. Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch)
18. Last Will (PC)
19. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Switch)
20. Toki (Switch)
21. Captain Toad Treasure Tracker (Switch)
22. Macdows 95 (PC)
23. We were here together (PC)
24. Strange Brigade (PC)
25. Beyond Eyes (PC)
26. Super Smash Bros Melee Ultimate (Switch)
27. Monaco: what's yours is mine (PC)
28. Tick Tock : A tale for two (PC)
29. Street of rogue (PC)
30. Hitman (2016) (PC)
31. Slay the Spire (PC)
32. Katana Zero (PC)
Time repeating ninja slowy downy ninja game. Think hotline Miami combined with side on ninjing. My hand hurts after playing it. Quite short though. Easily completed in one sitting.

Relatedly...



Katana Zero. May work for you.

No. 24, ‘‘twas good though.

1: Prey 2017(PC)
2: The Room(PC)
3: The Room 2 (PC)
4: Night in the woods (PC)
5: Ghost of a tale (PC)
6: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii (U))
7: Baba is You (Switch)
8. Phoenix Wright ace attorney (PC)
9. Phoenix Wright ... and Justice for all (PC)
10. Tales of escape (PC)
11. Escape first (PC)
12. Escape First 2 (PC)
13. Curious Cases (PC)
14. The Experiment: Escape Room (PC)
15. Phoenix Wright Tables and tribulations (PC)
16. Untitled Goose Game (Switch)
17. Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch)
18. Last Will (PC)
19. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Switch)
20. Toki (Switch)
21. Captain Toad Treasure Tracker (Switch)
22. Macdows 95 (PC)
23. We were here together (PC)
24. Strange Brigade (PC)
25. Beyond Eyes (PC)
26. Super Smash Bros Melee Ultimate (Switch)
27. Monaco: what's yours is mine (PC)
28. Tick Tock : A tale for two (PC)
29. Street of rogue (PC)
30. Hitman (2016) (PC)
31. Slay the Spire (PC)
32. Katana Zero (PC)
33. Return of the obra dinn (PC)
Right good this. Not too long if you have a brain, but rather satisfying to figure out.

81. Doors and Rooms 3
82. Escape Funky Island
83. Superliminal
84. Donut County
85. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs 2
86. The Witch's Isle
87. Planet Alpha
88. Doors: Awakening
89. Metrico+
90. Minit: Zelda-looking puzzling explore-em-up with a Gameboy aesthetic and gameplay hook that your character dies every 60 seconds. Well, you can manually kill them off whenever you want but they'll die at most every 60 seconds. Weirdly that's the part that I found least interesting about the whole thing; the game's designed such that it's never really a barrier, which means it never really adds anything either. Indeed there's enough going on in terms of exploring and trying out your inventory against areas you find that I'd have much preferred to be able to play the game without the constant dying because it would've encouraged me to do more of the outstanding side quests and whatnot. As it stands I was done with it as soon as I finished the main game because exploring for the last four monster tentacles etc just isn't attractive when you're battling against dying rather than having fun exploring. It doesn't help matters that some of it's seemingly designed to pad the length out just by obtuse design. So, for example, you need to sabotage a machine to initiate the end game but it's not even clear that's something you can or want to do. Or maybe I'm just dumb I suppose. Either way, it's a fun enough time for the two hours it lasts but it I was expecting more from it given that the early stages are so much more fan than what it kind of devolves into.

47) Sonic Mania (PS4)

Sonic was always shit. Long live Zool.

5 to go!

48) Untitled Goose Game (Xbox)

HONK. AHAHAHAH ITS SO HILARIOUS. HONK.

For 2 minutes. HONK.

Meh.

Satsuma once again firmly establishing his refusal to take part in the zeitgeist.

Bloody Aladdin & Lion King are like £25! Fack that noise.

I’ve been trying to do roguelike Gonner: Blueberry edition which is rest getting on my fucking nerves. Like most roguelike games you can have a good run and just fuck it up in a heartbeat. It’s good though. I’ve been to the final world once, so far!

49) Donut County (Switch)

Jesus Christ, it’s even less of a game than the Goose game. What a royal waste of time and energy. It’s just a bit shit really and does less than fuck all with the concept. Avoid like my arse on a diet of nuts and plant food.

Bored at work on Christmas Eve? Come watch me try and finish my 50th game.

I’m playing Gonner and it fucking sucks balls. I’ve reached the 5th and final level 3 times but usually die instantly on the fourth world to some stupid shit.

Gonner’s a roguelike where if you get hit your head falls off and you lose a heart. Lose all the hearts and you die. But get hit when you haven’t got your head on and you instantly die. This leads to some annoying deaths as your head goes wandering and some body is being chased by bees and shit.

Collect purple bricks for a chance to come back or buy stuff in the shop.

The aesthetic is pretty good and original. It’s not pixel art either. It’s a sort of day of the dead thing.

Come have a look if you’re bored then at:

http://Www.mixer.com/ian_aris

A run might take 15/20 minutes and I’ll probably do two or three before I throw my controller at the telly.

Cunting shit. Man I hate that game.

50) Gato Roboto (Switch)

A short and sweet and simple metroidvania game. Took me 3 hours and I had a good time with it. They nailed the movement system. On sale for about £3 and well worth it.

7/10

51) Gonner: Blueberry Edition (Xbox)

Frustratingly great. That last world was a real shitter and, frankly, I wanted to quit so many times after so many deaths. I can’t tell you what the ending was about cause I haven’t the foggiest. I’ve literally no idea what I was doing or why, but it was a really fun game. And the right side of pisseatingdifficult. The final Cheevo for completing the game is 0.25% of all players apparently which is probably, I can’t say for certain, the rarest Cheevo I’ve had on Xbox [well, for just completing the game]. Give it a go, it’s on GamePass for free init.

I haven't kept track of this at all this year but, I've just completed Halo Reach again. Probably my favourite Halo game. It was great.

52) Final Station (Xbox)

This was given away on Games with Gold. It’s a, hnngh, pixel art resource management survival horror esq game with a weird train interlude thing.

Think 2D Resi or that Vita game I played ages ago on PS+ (Jesus what was that called... the horror one. I super enjoyed it) but this has a linear story it’s trying to tell about people being turned into “husks” aka zombies, of course.

It’s short (4 hours or so) but it’s really enjoyable. Most of all the sound effects are fucking spot on. The crunch of snow, the steam pipes hissing or the cold silence of nothing; the atmosphere is what sells this game. And it really works, you want to know what’s going on annnnd... it’s got one of those weird endings. I didn’t understand it so I went off to find out about it from people who have more time and inclination to research obscure video games and, y’know what, no one appears to have a good answer. Well that’s that fucked then. It’s got some DLC that only £3.99 which is really tempting me but I’ve played enough games this year now.

52: done.

While looking for an ending theory I came across this guy playing it. After the ending at about 24 minutes his missus comes in and starts talking to him. Brilliant. Like and subscribe. Better than KWEBELLKWOP

1. Outrun SEGA AGES (Switch) – reached all five destinations and unlocked all power ups on easy difficulty and long time limit; finished game using all power ups at normal difficulty and normal time limit
2. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch) – completed all three episodes with 159 diamonds
3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (PS4) - completed campaign on Normal
4. Super Blackjack Battle II Turbo - The Card Warriors (Switch) - completed Single Player Combat mode with Andre
5. Undertale (Switch) - got Neutral and Pacifist endings
6. Deltarune (Switch) - completed Chapter 1
7. Portal 2 (PC) - completed all six co-op courses
8. Escaped Chasm (PC) - got 2/4 endings
9. You are Jeff Bezos (PC) - got Neutral and True Endings
10. Celeste (Switch) - finished in 11:31:11.381, 42/175 strawberries and 2,261 deaths
11. Overcooked 2 (Switch) - finished story in co-op mode with 95 stars
12. SteamWorld Dig: A Fistful of Dirt (Switch) - finished story
13. Degrees of Separation (Switch) - finished story with damp ending
14. Distance (PC VR) - completed Adventure mode
15. 39 Days to Mars (Switch) - finished in co-op

I really liked the space Victorian aesthetic, but it was way too short (even as someone who likes short game experiences). I was hoping for something like Lovers, but it ended up being more about repairing the ship and drinking tea, and we seemed to fail two objectives and still ended up on Mars. A bit disappointing.

2019 Retrospective:
Turns out most of the games I liked the most happened toward the end of the year -
Return of the obra dinn is excellent, but only really playable once.
Hitman was brilliant and very replayable (Indeed wen I got hitman 2, I basically only played the original missions for hours)
Streets of rogue was fun coop chaos. A very fun game to learn. Same could be said for monaco.
and then before that, enjoyed the xenoblades, but wasn't so fond of the core combat loop.
and Prey was excellent, but again the actual combat was a weak point.

Worst game here? Without a doubt Beyond eyes. it were awful to play. But very pretty.

Obviously I ended up going back to it and got the other two endings among other things.

One final game for me this year - 10. Snooker Nation. A nice relaxing snooker sim but in career/tour mode, I won the first tournament
I entered and apparently that it - tour completed. There's literally just one, five-round event.

2. Fallout 3 plus all DLC and side/unmarked quest.