Here's stuff I got in July. Not too shabby I think.

La Boîte Orange is such a classic, great acquisition

Yup, the fact that a game like this got made and it wasn't by Nintendo is still shocking to me. It's also pretty challenging for a modern big studio game too. Everything about it feels like the game shouldn't exist but it does. I played on PS5 but usually Steam tells you if it has controller support, modern big budget games do seem to always come with controller support.

Thank you for the reply! I played prince of persia on PS5 too.

The controller support question was actually for Trepang haha... Steam does show it on the interface, but sometimes having support doesn't mean good support...

This DLC while not terrible is just incredibly disappointing. I feel like I'm soft on this because I like Trepang2's base game and combat mechanics a lot more than because this DLC provided substantial content. Compared to Warhammer 40K Boltgun's Forces of Corruption DLC which added 3 hours of gameplay for about $10, Bladekisser only provides slightly over an hour and a half worth of content and slightly maybe longer depending on what difficulty you play on.

The best way of describing Bladekisser that's basically an add on pack with 2 new levels and some new weapons.

New levels are kind of a mixed bag, for one there is no overarching plot with them and it's basically just standalone episodic stories. TF63 is kind of on the forgettable side providing the same amount of gameplay that you would find in the base game. Omega Facility fares better since you have an okay submarine boss and the level design is more creative with different parts of the facility you will fight enemies on, there is one standout section towards the end where you fight enemies with the same moves as the player, but these encounters are over pretty quickly and its at the very end of the level. The submarine boss is more tolerable than the bosses in the main game since it autosaves on every phase and it has enemies waves to break up the monotony of shooting the sub while running away from missiles. There is a super strange first person platforming section while jumping on the debris of the submarine you defeat, you can't get a game over here which is good since it would make this section a weird addition otherwise.

The new weapons aren't particularly that interesting either, I do admittedly like the sword since along with the invisiblity cloak kind of gives the player a ninja like power fantasy of sneaking up and surprising enemies up close with an upclose slice. I do like how you can use hostages while using the sword too which gives the weapon more use. The revolver was borderline useless since trying to fire with it for more than 2 consecutive shots mean the player character would rapid fire like in a cowboy movie which means ammo will be chewed through and the ammo pool this weapon has is pretty small to begin with on top of the weapon being super inaccuarate. The rest of the weapons I'm not sure if exclusive to this DLC or were in the main game since none of them made much of an impression on me.

Overall, this DLC I expected more out of since Forces of Corruption came out in the same month and released at the same price. I did at the very least enjoy what was here considering I like Trepang2 but I really do wish there was more on offer, maybe more is coming but I wanted this to be to Trepang2 what FEAR Extraction Point was to the base FEAR game.

A bit of a side question: do you know how's the controller support of this game? I own it and it's on my 'soon' backlog, but my gaming PC is currently hooked up to my TV and M&K is not an option for me ATM...

Prince of Persia is a weird series for me, I have enjoyed all the games in the series but the ones I have played were made by Ubisoft. I have never really touched the non Ubisoft related games in the series and I have never touched the original 2D side scrolling game, then there was the fact that I never thought there would ever thought Ubisoft would ever make a new PoP game especially considering how much money Assassin's Creed and Far Cry makes them but low and behold Ubisoft would finally make a new game in the series and on top of this, the new game they would make isn't even in 3D but it's more of a homage to the original 2D side scrolling game all though this new game would take inspiration from modern games like the Mercury Steam Metroid games, Guacamelee games, Celeste and the Ori games to varying degrees.

I do really enjoy this game, but later in the review there is going to be some lengthy criticism I have, but this all comes from the fact that this is already a really enjoyable game that could be even better. I'm honestly surprised that a game like this can come from a big name publisher whose name isn't Nintendo especially for the kind of game Lost Crown is.

What PoP The Lost Crown is esstentially a metroidvania, but it's not just that but it also very challenging platforming and combat especially for a game in the genre, the platforming in general is kind of like a cross between Celeste, the recent Rayman games and Guacamelee. Lost Crown is much more challenging that any Ubisoft PoP endeavour, if you were one of those people who heavily criticized the 2008 cel shaded reboot for being "too easy". Lost Crown and I don't like to saying this since it's so overdone is the "Dark Souls" of Ubisoft Prince of Persia.

Much of the game is dodging a vast array of traps from spikes, to moving platforms where you need to dodge out of the way quickly or you will get crushed, solving time puzzles, timed spiked walls, using your location displacement power to solve puzzles and in conjuction to the dash and in some levels dodging spikes while dashing, double jumping and timing pole swings to make it to the end. The dash Sargon gets is very similar to Celeste, the double jump is almost similar to Guacamelee's, the grapple hook towards the end of the game is similar to one in the Ori games to some degree. The amount of insane platforming guanlet the game throws at you in the main story path can feel pretty stressful and can be relieving to get to the next save point. The platforming especially towards the end of the beaten path requires some insane precision.

The game's platforming can be so challenging that I played the game on guided mode since it's similar to Guacamelee where it's more about intense platforming and combat than it is about moment to moment exploration, I didn't want to spend majority of time dying to platforming gaunlets that wasn't on the beaten story path. The easy mode also comes in handy, I was playing on normal for much of the game but then towards the end lowered to easy since you lose less health upon failing a platforming sections, I don't get why the game doesn't just constantly autosave like Celeste and Guacamelee do since if I get a full game over, I don't want to do the platforming parts I already did, save points are plentiful to the game's credit but it does get frustrating getting a full game over because I was stuck on one super hard platforming part, the game checkpoints during bosses so I don't get why it wouldn't here.

Speaking of bosses, the combat is mostly solid all though, I kind of wished it took more inspiration from Guacamelee and had mandatory combat, some parts of TLC does it but it isn't consistent. I would prefer this over optional enemies I want to skip past being HP sponges.

Some other criticisms I will also mention, that the dimension shifting upgrade later in the game doesn't get much use, TLC makes you get this dimesnion warping platform shifting upgrade but it gets little to no use in the main game.

The bosses are also a mixed bag, none of them are outright "bad" except for Menolias. What I liked early on with bosses is that they were challenging but they also had the ability for the player to parry them like in Mercury Steam Metroid, but the thing is, most of the bosses after Azdhada stop having "vengenful parries" or major ways to do damage outside of upgrading your swords to get to phases a little faster. The bosses had so much HP afterwards that I had to lower to easy and not engage with the RPG systems. The bosses afterwards are still decent but none of them ever really reach the heights that Azdhada did.

I will say some positivity and say the story is pretty decent, it isn't amazing or anything but Sargon is a decent protagonist who goes through just enough character development where he starts off as someone who blindly follows the Immortals and is quite arrogant but slowly mellows out and starts being more humble. Vahram is also fleshed out enough that I felt kind of bad for him and was decent enough anti villain that at the very least I paid attention to the story outside of moment to moment gameplay.

Overall, PoP TLC is a very good game even though I got some criticism for it. The game has a very good foundation and I respect Ubisoft at all for making a game like this considering how much flak they get for their bad PR. I would love for their to be a sequel or another game like this but with more refinements, what's here is already very good.

I'm glad to see more people talking about this game. It's not perfect, but it's really well-made and I would buy a sequel with my eyes closed.

There are a lot of metroidvanias, but there aren't many 'high budget' ones such as this game and Metroid Dread, and I'm a sucker for those. I wish side-scrollers with AAA budget were a thing.

I really wanted to love this game. I played Diablo 1 back in the day and absolutely loved it, both the gameplay and the unforgettable atmosphere. The tristan theme is my favorite video game music ever.

I skipped Diablo 2 because I didn't own a PC at those times (I played D1 on a PS1) and then I played Diablo 3 many years later (somewhat recently) with low expectations, it felt so different. And for sure it was, I found it too cartoony for my taste (that WoW look and feel) and I missed the simplicity of the setting of the first, ended up retiring it after few hours of play.

With Diablo 4 Blizzard went with a darker tone which got me a bit excited. In a way it delivered, I think the scenarios are gorgeous and sets up the mood perfectly (even though it doesn't match the simplicity of the first). The music is top notch. The classes and skills are interesting enough. Big open-world with lots of stuff to do. What could go wrong?

Difficulty. Or lack thereof. The game is just too easy. Shortly after picking up some few levels and unlocking what became my main skills, the game became a chore to play. I know ARPGs are not supposed to have complex gameplay (it's mostly a 'zone out' kind of game) but playing in World Tier 2 (the hardest available before beating the main campaign) felt like story mode.

I've picked the rogue class for my character and made a build about poison damage and setting up traps, didn't read anything on internet I simply picked up because it sounded fun. In my mind this was supposed to be a swift character, set up traps, attack with poison, dodge, and keep moving, right? Well, in practice, I felt like a tank. My armor bonuses that recovered life automatically alone were enough to take care of almost all the damage I ever took, no need to heal or to move away from the line of fire. I made a build expecting to keep jumping around on the screen and suddenly I realized that I just didn't have to move at all. The game was on story mode despite being on the hardest difficulty available.

So I decide to speed run the main campaign to unlock the World Tier 3. This choice of locking tier 3 difficulty behind beating the campaign kinda ruined the game for me. The story of this game seems pretty cool, but playing in a hurry (not taking the optional dialog options, skipping some side stuff on the cities in the way, etc) killed all the immersion.

World Tier 3 seems a bit better after I tested it out on a dungeon, felt like what Tier 2 should be. But for now I'm good with the game. I'll probably forget about it for awhile and maybe come back to it later, after a expansion or two gets release.

Oh, and last balancing thing that is kinda of atrocious: it seems that everything balances to your level. Leveling up and grinding fells a bit pointless if the entire game will level up together with you, right?

Result: completed

Rating: 7/10

Pros:
+ great graphics
+ great ost
+ great voice acting
+ interesting plot
+ vast world
+ quick to move around
+ fun character builds
+ easy to respec

Cons:
- too easy
- world tier 3 locked behind campaign
- always online
- greedy microtransactions
- repetitive

¡Un forastero!

What can I say. It's RE4, it's RE Engine, it's Capcom doing great as they have been doing it nowadays. I love the progression of this game, both how different some sections feel (villa, castle, lab, etc) and how it becomes more actiony as it goes (saving bullets at the beginning, blasting everything at the end).

I still thinks the original RE4 is very playable (it's tanky but not as bad as the PS1 games), but it's hard to go back I confess. Moving around and aiming feels just right in here (as with the other remakes).

The DLC is pretty good as well and I tried my best to play it 'side by side', progressing on both campaigns at the same pace. I wish they could somehow do this out the box, like an official order of the chapters to go back and forth the two campaigns.

It's a very good game, really easy to recommend, but it's not my favorite Resident Evil. I'm one of the few that loved RE3 remake and I have it in high regard (I love how replayable it is). Village still takes the top spot for me (I want to replay it in third person so badly!).

Result: completed

Rating: 9/10

Pros:
+ controls well
+ great progression
+ weapon variety
+ good voice acting
+ cheesy cutscenes and dialog in a good way

Cons:
- (none)

If you like hard games, I can't recommend this one enough:



The OST is just perfect

The Legend of Kyrandia

Do you folks remember this thread from a couple of years ago? Yeah, I decided to double check how AI is doing nowadays with all the recent fuzz. Couldn't resist and paid ChatGPT premium for a month.

I tried to generate comics themed by video-game franchises (a bit challenging because GPT tries to avoid copyrighted stuff). You can see the results below.

The thing works so well that I not only asked for the captions and the images, but I also asked for a bash command (Linux) to convert the webp images to png and reduce the size of them, and also to generate the BBCode to post it here, and it nailed everything on the first try using very simple language.

19 of my 247 scores are 10/10s, 7.7% of my reviews in other words

I'm nominating V Rising

Mostly an okay-ish month while shifting focus on revisiting some older titles:

Ad Infinitum - 10h30m / 100% (2 playthroughs)
Children of Silentown - 2h25m - REPLAY
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller - 20h45m / 100% - BEST
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - 16h10m / 100% (2 playthroughs)
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC - 3h30m / 100%
Gray Matter - 13h15m / 100%
Prey (2006) - 4h35m - REPLAY
Splatterhouse (2010) - 13h40m / 100% (2 playthroughs)
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas - 4h25m - REPLAY
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 - 18h50m - REPLAY
Whispering Willows - 2h / 100% - WORST

Ad Infinitum is a creepy walking sim set in World War I and a game that's been in development for quite some time, kinda reminds me of the Atomic Heart situation where it wasn't exactly clear whether the game is ever gonna see the light of day. In 2023, it finally released and... people were divided on this one. You've got these amazingly detailed environments with proper animations and rock-solid sound design / score, but the rather uneventful nature of the game where most of the narrative is told via text scraps scattered all over the place noticeably drags down the whole experience and the slow-burn pacing is not helping either. Then there's also the missing animations in some of the players actions that break the immersion, the absolutely barebones stealth sections and the non-existent puzzle difficulty along with the primitively simplistic "boss fights", the asking price of 34,99€ on Steam is just not worth it and I probably wouldn't have played this one earlier if it wasn't for Humble including it in one of their bundles. If there's one impression this game left on me is that the creature / environment designers should be working on a reboot / remake / sequel for NecroVisioN, I think they could put together something real good with the right team by bringing back that series back to life.

Replayed Children of Silentown to hunt down the last few achievements, first completion was in March:

Children of Silentown is a point & click adventure with a charming yet uncanny artstyle, one that is also perfectly suited for a controller (I've completed it on the Steam Deck with 0 issues). There is almost no voice acting, but the story is interesting enough and paced out well to keep you going, it doesn't take too long to beat and you won't have to pixel-hunt for items or get stuck on one of the many puzzle mini-games for too long since they've included the option to skip them, it does an alright job at throwing just enough tasks at the player without making the game feel on-rails and it's completely devoid of moon logic in terms of puzzle design as well. The story resolution appears to be vague at first, but you should have an idea of what they were going for after viewing the other endings (which can only be done either by replaying the entirety of the last chapter or by backing up your save before the final cutscene). I only found some of the later mini-games a tiny bit annoying, but overall I'd say it's a decent short trip with cute graphics, a little horror touch to it and a beautiful soundtrack.

Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller is a point & click adventure in an episodic format with distinct western comicbook-type visuals that admittedly take some time to get used to due to partially uncanny character model design and the not-so-accurate facial expressions. Aside from some minor script glitches and inconsistent dialogue / cutscene skips it quickly grew to become one of my favorites in the genre: the voice acting is really competent (with Erica being voiced by the lead singer behind the game's theme song!), the puzzle difficulty perfectly ramps up from one episode to the next, the game's quite long without filler and the cognition powers add a new layer to the otherwise done-to-death genre tropes and while it introduces more possibilities to how a puzzle could be solved, it's never unfair but not blatantly obvious with handing clues to the player either, it also keeps things fresh by introducing either a new cognition power or a different mechanic with each subsequent episode and the story is full of intrigue, mystery and, oh joy, no shitty cliffhanger ending! I've been looking for more Black Mirror-like p&c's and this one definitely delivered!

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is one of Ninja Theory's what at first seems overlooked gems of the 7th gen and one I remember being pure eye-candy after going through a fair share of shooters with a drab-looking color palette: it's safe to say it still is, there's not many titles out there with colors this vivid. Is it a competent game though? Mhm, yes and no. This one is mixing up platforming with a very streamlined parkour system that is really hard to fail at and combat mechanics to break up the pace. Problem is, while getting through each platforming section is pleasantly smooth and well animated, it's also piss easy and offers about as much challenge as holding up when scaling a building in Assassin's Creed, it's not exactly the most exciting way of going about it. Combat in itself is functional and does what it's meant to do, but with the painfully small variety of enemies and limited combo options, it gets old super fast and the first few encounters already lay out everything you'll be doing over the course of the next 6-7 hours, the progression system doesn't add that much depth either. There is however a really cool vehicle-type mechanic later in the game where traversal is done on top of a speedy cloud, it's only used in a couple levels but it's super fun everytime you hop back on it, it reminded me of the jetpack sections in Warhammer 40.000: Space Marine which also felt insultingly short. Other than that, the story is quite interesting, the voice actors are giving their all, the writing is mostly alright with some odd moments here and there, the boss fights are engaging (though one of them is recycled once) and the length feels just right. The Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC lets you play as an entirely different character with his own set of skills and levels, it's 3 hours worth of content that's somehow even more streamlined than the base game but it is mildly more challenging and the cutscenes are done pretty well. Ultimately, if you don't mind the on-fails feel and the lack of depth in combat, you'll have an above-average experience for about 2 sessions. Taking its drawbacks into consideration however, it's dreadfully mid all around.

Gray Matter is yet another point & click adventure that I've discovered back in 2010 on 360, a time the genre was slowly fading away from the game industry. In hindsight, I don't quite understand why a p&c has been ported to a 7th gen console in the first place, but that's a story for another time. Since one of the main protagonists you play as is a skilled magician, performing magic tricks on people plays a big role in the narrative and it's also the reason I dropped it in the first chapter back then, I simply didn't understand how it all works. This time, after carefully studying the tutorial, it clicked at last and I saw it through to the end. The modern Oxford setting was strikingly reminiscent of the Black Mirror franchise which is always a huge plus in my book it's what originally piqued my interest. The soundtrack (including tracks from the band featured in Cognition as well), while somewhat repetitive, perfectly sets the mood where you can kick back with a cup of coffee and enjoy the cozy atmosphere, the story is too hitting the right beats and keeps you hooked until the end, once again with a conclusive and "satisfying" ending. The backdrops are drop-dead gorgeous, but can feel too static at times and could have used a few more animations. The voice acting is of mixed quality, but most of it is definitely okay. The hotspot indicator eliminates the pixelhunt problem which is always good and with the exception of 1-2 poorly explained puzzles, the difficulty is fair with little handholding. Traversal however feels janky and not as responsive and there's a loading screen everytime you switch scenes which can be off-putting, there's also a weird "bug" that halves the in-game framerate sometimes when you re-launch the game and the only known fix for it is to restart your PC (same issue persists in games like Second Sight and Velvet Assassin). If you've already seen all the highs of this genre, it's a worthy addition to your p&c collection, but it's no top10 material.

Prey (2006) is a technically impressive FPS that's been quite advanced for its release year and I feel like not many people know about its existence. It's been delisted from Steam some time ago and left with a butt-ugly SOLD OUT! thumbnail with no access to its original store page, it's safe to say its become abandonware ever since. The game starts off with one of the best openings seen in an FPS (pretty much BioShock-tier good) and effectively sets the stage for what's about to come. There's quite a bit of story in here, but you'll be mowing down dozens of alien-like creatures most of the time and barely hit the breaks for the narratives sake, though it is fairly original given the alien abduction-theme and it's got a few twists up its sleeve along the way. There is a lot to praise here: the voice acting, the soundtrack, the masterfully crafted alien environments along with an arsenal that feels just as alive and the emphasis on verticality with portals, upside-down walking and vehicle segments. It isn't entirely without faults though: dying in this game means jack, all you have to do is go through the same minigame each time you bite virtual dust to come back exactly where you left off so there's no point in picking a harder difficulty setting without a true penalty, the other 2 games I can think of that share a similar problem are Prodeus and the original Battlefield: Bad Company. It's also about the same length as a Call of Duty campaign, which isn't inherently a bad thing if all of its playtime is "meaty" enough, but they could have gotten a lot more mileage out of this games story methinks. Which brings me to the cancelled sequel that looked overly ambitious and promising, it might have been a huge loss but then again, we might have never gotten the unrelated Prey "sequel" from 2017, which is one of the best immersive sims ever made: I'd say it wasn't a sacrifice for nought.

Slaughterhouse (2010) is the 3D brawler reboot that's gone through a fair share of problems during its development with a very 7th gen feel to it. I've played it back on 360 on release and I remember being appalled by all the framerate issues and infuriatingly long loading times (thankfully, neither is a problem on Xenia), but I still managed to pull through as it's not that long of a game anyway. I'm not familiar with the OG trilogy, but based on what I've heard / seen, it was prominent for its over-the-top gore and this reboot continues that tradition with gallons of blood spraying all over the place while you rip everything to pieces. The soundtrack is fittingly rocky, the enemy design is pleasantly grotesque, the voice acting is superb, the progression system actually makes a difference to make the game feel less repetitive since brawlers have the tendency to "stagnate" in terms of gameplay, but the combat is still ultimately rather simple to learn and execute. The reason you'll be seeing the same loading screen quite often are the various instant-death segments that are made more frustrating with crappy 2010-esque checkpoint placement, it's a lot more tolerable on Xenia though since it irons out the technical quirks on the original platform. Additionally, there's survival-mode-type maps from the campaign and the entire OG trilogy remastered as a bonus: they might be super short in length, but the difficulty is much higher in comparison, as is the jank by todays standards. As for the reboot itself, it's okay at best and worth at least one playthrough, I only decided to revisit it because it appeared in one of those Xenia fully compatible game compilations on YouTube and this one really benefits from the emulation boost.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 & 2 was when Team Rainbow joined the ranks of casual cover-based shooters with regenerating health and a bodycount so extreme I find it hard to label the two as "tactical". Granted, it was actually Lockdown that steered the series in the shooting gallery direction, Vegas basically refined said concept. Regardless of the fact that Vegas successfully buried everything Rainbow Six ever stood for (Siege does not exist in my universe), I still found these game a lot of fun, it's a quick and deadly action romp much like the campaigns in CoD (Vegas 1 dropped before the original Modern Warfare). The only advantage V1 has over the sequel is the location variety, it's infinitely better and more memorable than the brown & grey warehouses / office buildings in V2. Part 2 however adds sprint and character customization in single-player with progression-based rewards, adding a lot more value to the solo component. Another few extras V2 comes with is a couple new AI commands, easy difficulty, more terrorist hunt maps to choose from and functional Steam overlay, though both titles suffer from offering a forgettable story, dated visuals, the somewhat RNG-based gun accuracy, the lack of subtitles and low dialogue audio. The real highlight in both games is the aforementioned terrorist hunt mode, extremely fun in both solo and coop with a stronger tactical feel to it compared to the linear nature of the campaign. Both can be picked up on Steam for 5 bucks on sale these days, but their age shows and I can't quite recommend them as much now as I could back in '06 / '08.

Whispering Willows is a 2D adventure with the Prey-like ghost-leaves-body-to-access-out-of-reach-areas spin on it and while the game is mid at best, it's easily the worst on this list. The atmosphere and soundtrack are its strongest suit, but the ugly cutscenes, the terribly slow pacing, the amount of backtracking and most of the story being told via notes made the 2 hours I spent on it feel like an eternity and not in a good way. The whole thing felt like a mobile game and if you see me describing your game as such, you'll know I'm not holding it in high regard, to put it mildly. Frankly speaking, I already forgot what the story was about by the time I typed this out so... yeah, this is below-palate-cleanser-level and I can't recommend it, unless you absolutely destroyed your backlog and are dying for just about anything, maybe THEN consider it an option.

I'm glad to see Enslaved being mentioned here, such an underrated game. I wouldn't mind a fresh reboot of Slaughterhouse too, I didn't play it myself (I'm too lazy for emulators, used copies are too expensive) but I kinda like how stupid and cool it looks.

I never liked it... I was supposed to have a lot of nostalgia for it, since my first console was a Master System, I only owned a Nintendo a generation later with SNES. I hate the sensation of platforming really fast, with almost no room for having a reaction. With the exception of games that does time trials really well, I generally do not like to memorize a stage, I prefer to react to it as I go.

But I absolutely love Sonic Frontiers, that one is good.

Metroid Dread is the only metroidvania I need.

Correct answer, you are the only friend I need

Now:
- Containerized cloud instances
- Coded in React (NextJS)
- SQL backend

2 Years and older:
- Single dedicated server
- Coded in PHP, no framework
- SQL backend

Search is the same DB as everything else, custom written search "engine". The PHP site had no dependencies. I custom wrote everything. The new site I still write most of my own stuff but have used external packages for things like drag & drop and ChartJS for graphs. I don't believe in scraping for the site. I do use the official Xbox Game Pass, Steam, GOG and itch.io APIs for some game data.

There is a lot more going on behind the scenes like a CDN, logging and monitoring service, etc.

All of this is a one man operation? Man, you are a hero.

I can only imagine how long/how many people would take to keep HLTB on a big corporation, that is, with many departments involved, decisions spread across teams, production environment locked up, thousands of stupid meetings, ticket creation, status reports, etc.

Back to the tech stuff, everything comes from SQL? No caching specific service such as Redis involved?

I got sick for a couple of days and I wasn't in the mood to play anything serious or that required my full attention. I got this game with a discount and it seemed like the perfect mindless game for a sick day.

And it was great! Just what I needed, a stupid little game with easy controls that I don't have to think so much plus some old episodes of the TV show (my comfort food/guilty pleasure I guess). I played 4 out of the 5 campaign chapters and had a great time.

Then I got healthy again and went back to play the last chapter of the campaign. I couldn't stand how dull this game is. Retired.

Everything about the game feels underdeveloped, especially when you compare it with the other (great) RPGs available in the franchise. The combat lacks weight and they didn't figure out a way to do good visual feedback on the attacks. No matter how much nostalgia I have for that horrible N64 game, I couldn't play it to completion.

As a last note, to be fair, the game is designed mostly for multiplayer and to be played with friends, and I played it with bots. But on the other hand, anything is 'better with friends' anyway, right?

Result: retired

Rating: 7/10

Screenshots:


There is an abundance of pooping and farting references, as expected.


And vomiting.


Why didn't the toilet paper make it across the road? It got stuck in the crack.

Not quite a "support" thread, but I think it fits here.

Being both a website user and a programmer on my day to day job I have to congratulate you folks behind HLTB (is it just Everdred?). Two big highlights from me are how fast the game search is and how big is the game catalog. Handling my (huge) gaming backlog here it's been a pleasure, good job!

I know some stuff can be sensitive to share (even due security concerns), but can you share anything regarding the technology behind it? Like, do you have a separate database/service for searches (like elastic)? Do you need to scrap anywhere to get new games into the game catalog? Are you hosting it on a good old fashioned VPS or are you on a fancy cloud thingy?

One day you find yourself with an empty backlog. You've completed every game you own.

😂😂😂

WOTW took everything great about TBF and cranked it up to 11. Better combat, better platforming, better movement, better boss fights, better levels and better music. Really hoping we get an Ori 3.

I'm kinda happy that they skipped Ori 3 for No Rest For The Wicked instead. I'm playing the early access and I'm loving it.

Out of curiosity, I decided to take a quick look on Ori reviews on YouTube. From the thumbnails alone I got this:





Then a quick scroll on the comment section of IGN's review:









Wow, people really like this thing.

Am I crazy for playing this much and updating the blog right before my exams begin? Yep, probably. But that's the fun part of living, right?
Anyway, here's a mid-week update because I tackled some of my semi-long-term goals last week and it's worth noting. 😊

So, regarding completed games, we have:

Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!


This game is one of the rare ones on my "do not recommend" list. I'm a sucker for quick puzzles and wanted to actually play all those games we see too many times in those YouTube shorts ads, but never could because they never really existed. So, I gave this game a try and oh boy, did I regret it!

The puzzles are very, but VERY repetitive. As a minesweeper player, I usually do not have a problem with that, but this game is repetitive and really doesn't bring any challenge to the table. The only difficult puzzle is the money grab, and that difficulty is all but natural. You have to gamble to get any level, and 3-star completions are just dumb luck at that point.

Finally, this game is not made for completionists. The $1 million achievement took me months to finish (and that is including a couple of hours farming)! So, all in all, the game is fun for the first few minutes and scratches the itch of all those little phone games, but it's definitely not worth the price nor your time.

SquareCells


A small Minesweeper variant. Nothing much to say except it's nice. A good puzzle game if you don't mind minimalist appearances. 😊

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion


I finally got that last achievement!!! That */%& Shadow Turnip achievement took me literal years to get because my luck is awful and it wouldn't appear no matter how many car trains I completed. 😰 Anyway, it's over now. Great roguelike about vegetables and tax evasion. Very funny and quirky. Would definitely recommend it as a quick game to complete in a night.

Hidden Winter Cats


More hidden cats! 🔥
It's been a disappointing week for puzzle games. Once again, same as last week with some of the 100 Hidden Cats games, the cats are a bit too easy to find in the free level and the DLC one is NOT worth it: half the picture doesn't even contain cats! Also, they're as small as a needle's head. That's just artificial difficulty and is not worth the price.

That's it for the last week and a half. I'm still thinking about the voting/recommendation system. In the meantime, please continue to send me some recommendations; it's very much appreciated. I'll try to update the blog once my exams are over (in approximately 2 weeks). In the meantime, here's the list of new games added to the backlog this week (yes, I cracked, AGAIN 😑, but hey, I'm happy during my finals weeks, so it's worth the trouble 😁).

New games of the week (and a half):
- Cocoon (2023)
- Outer Wilds & Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
- Subnautica
- Subnautica: Below Zero
- Cats Love Boxes
- ToriDori
- Sudocats
- Zodiacats
- FIND ALL
- FIND ALL 2: Middle Ages
- FIND ALL 3: Travel
- FIND ALL 4: Magic
- Purrfectly Hidden Cats - Kittenrock
- Hidden Cats in Amusement Park
- Hidden Cats in Breeze Village
- Hidden Cats in Town
- Hidden Cats in Santa's Realm
- Hidden Cats in Berlin
- Hidden Cats In Paris
- Hidden Cats in Rome
- Hidden Cats in Spooky Town
- Hidden Cats in New York
- Hidden Cats in London

Beginning of the Journey Backlog: 794 Games + 20 DLCs
Beginning of the Journey Time to Beat All: 1007 Days 19 Hours

Previous Backlog: 827 Games + 29 DLCs
Previous Time to Beat All: 1098 Days

Current Backlog: 846 Games + 30 DLCs
Current Time to Beat All: 1100 Days 21 Hours

I'm so sad to read that Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them! is not that good... I have it on my backlog and I had high expectations for it!

I know it's not trying to be a WarioWare clone, but anything that resembles the series for just a bit always catch my eyes.

I'm nominating Stellar Blade