Pine (PC Game) vs Valheim

All about heroic labor for explorer-crafters.

Pine

With their cliffs having become too unstable, it is up to you - a human from a small tribe, to find a new home on this island which you soon learn is shared by five other races who are also running around gathering, trading and warring with each other.  You too can be friends with them, but not all at the same time since helping one usually angers a few others.

Elephants never forget!

This Unity built game has a decent story, quite pretty to look at, and is fun to play due to the interactivity with the other races. There are also some hard puzzles to be found here, and while melee combat isn't so great (it's probably the weakest part of the game) there's plenty enough to do without it. Definitely for explorer crafters (in that order, more about exploring than crafting) I give it four sparkler traps out of five.

Insight: Do the two pouch quests ASAP.

Valheim

With his enemies gaining strength Odin sends the best warriors he can find to defeat them on their world and to make it entertaining he ensures they only arrive in rags and are suffering from severe amnesia. "Welcome to Valheim idiot!" is not really an exaggeration as even basic tasks like running and jumping need to be leveled up upon arrival.

This survival game takes place on a randomly generated world where you (and up to nine co-op buddies) must craft, hunt, and ultimately slay the five big bads wandering the world. While the graphics aren't the sharpest they are quite serviceable especially when you take into account that you can cut down every large tree you see and turn mountains into deep pits if you so desire.

 

Pants get in the way of fighting!

I beat the first boss solo with minimal grind, but even that was already pushing the limits of my patience. Would I recommend this to my Friday night co-op group to potentially spend the entire evening doing mundane stuff like chopping trees, mining minerals and hunting game? Definitely not, especially since it is lacking in the story and variety department. If your crew enjoys those activities then you should try it out. If your team is more action orientated or you don't have a team, I think you should just stay away from this one.

Insight: The bow is very strong. Go for that as your first goal once you've got a workbench.

Little Inferno

The game for pyromaniacs.

Do you like burning things? If so, this game is for you. In it, you sit in front of a fire place, buy digital goods, and then proceed to burn said goods which earns you more money to buy more goods (which come in a wide assortment of things). You can burn spiders, toys and even JPG images on your computer!

Threw in a screenshot from Assassin's Creed: Unity since it was fitting.

Uh, yeah. So, that got really creepy really fast. Not one for me, thanks!

Bad North - Jotunn Edition

The vikings are coming!

In this small scale and almost "cute" Unity made strategy game, you are in control of up to four units in the defense of various islands against a hoard of viking invaders. There is no structure building, only structure defense as each house still standing at the end of each quick round nets you gold to upgrade your forces.

What is really impressive is how easy it is to get into the game, and how difficult it gets later on. You only really have three unit types in this rock, paper, scissors type available while the vikings have twice the variation. In between the island skirmishes you also must tactically decide which islands you want to go to - more houses might mean more gold but harder to defend. Or that island might have an item, or a recruitable commander.

They just invade from everywhere!

All the while you must outrun the viking fleet itself as getting caught is an instant game over. A perfect example of a game that's easy to learn and hard to master, I really enjoyed Bad North and highly recommend it to everyone, even those who dislike strategy games (like me)! That's how good it is. I give it 5 giant archers out of 5.

Insight: Archers are quite versatile once leveled up. Before parking them up on high ground (probably near your pike men) let them fire from the beach to knock vikings into the ocean (instakill). You can also position them behind shield guys to provide fire support.

Layers of Fear

An art project gone wrong.

In this Unity made, heavily railroaded walking simulator, you must explore a painter's creepy house in which you have almost no agency what so ever. You will literally have the rooms you walk through shift simply by turning around because apparently that's scary? At least there are jump scares to try keep you interested, and to be fair the house and interior decorations are very nice.

Unfortunately, they are also very interactive - in most cases pointlessly so, showcasing how little the designer knows about being player friendly. Want to open a door? Move the mouse cursor to the handle then drag it open. No, not click - and definitely not a single key press. That would be too passe. Same for opening drawers or pulling chains.

It's an impressive looking piece of shit.

The other problem is the save checkpoints are so far apart, you'll literally be pushing forward for the sake of doing so just to reach the next one, right past jump scares and even into the "enemies" who knock you out... and... then let you continue walking? It's been a long time since I played a game that was putting me to sleep and Layers of Fear did exactly that. Despite being pretty, it's boring, poorly designed, and only has worth being thrown into a dumpster fire. I give it half a can of paint out of 5. Don't bother playing it.

Also, because this game was so terrible I've opted to just skip Observer, another game made by these same developers, outright. No point in wasting my time in environments I don't enjoy and based on some reviews, Observer plays a lot like this one.

Insight: If you do play it and go into the basement, you'll need to ouija "Exit" to go back to the real game. Apparently that's a Halloween add on or something?

Liberate Hong Kong (Demo)

It's not liberating at all.

Inspired by the Hong Kong protests this Unity made game sees you don the black outfit and yellow hardhat of a protester facing off against a police line. The graphics are quite decent, and there are some nice info graphics that come up when you get close enough to them.

Hope you like reading, as there's not much else to do.

As a game though? Let's just say I hope the "full" version is better as this demo is terrible. You have a single road arena which isn't that big, and don't have much to do other than jog, pick up tear gas canisters  and duck to avoid getting shot, all of which will get boring after 5 minutes especially as the controls are a bit clunky. Apparently protestors can't walk while crouched?

Unfortunately this is not worth playing in its current state. If the map was expanded to a few city blocks and the player was given random objectives to do it might be better, but ultimately it's a game whose only win condition can be "survive for x amount of time" as it quite rightly captures that there's nothing you can really do against the police.

Insight: You can outrun the police mob, but just barely.

Now, because I really wanted to post something positive, here's a better use of those 5 minutes instead - watching this pretty talented busker illustrate a proper method of "non-violent" protest while under pressure.

The Cursed: Useless Girl

[Part of the Cursed story line]

For her actions in defeating Sarevok, Catharina is hailed as a hero of Baldur's Gate and is rewarded by the cleric lord of the city the resurrection of her allies Lu Lingqi and Sir Erland (who had been shipped in from Ulgoth's Beard).

Along with Party Girl and Elisabeth, they are given rooms in the Ducal Palace and get to relax for a few weeks. Imoen comes to visit, and is soon attacked by (really weak) assassins that manage to wound her.

Assassins so weak, just like Arno from AC: Unity.

Correspondence indicates that both she and Catharina were the targets of this attack, and that the men were in service to some rebellious knight up North named Caelar Argent. Reports from refugees indicate that she had assembled a rather large army and was marching towards Baldur's Gate.

Catharina immediately volunteers to assemble a team and mount an expedition to stop said force while Imoen immediately backs out, due to her new injury. That girl is useless.

Insight: When importing your final save from the last game, all characters are revived fully leading to some surprising revivals for me. :)

Today I Smiled: High Voices

I'm taking a short blogging break for a few days so I thought I'd leave you with something to listen to, courtesy of DL who is currently sucked into Filipino singers.

Marcelino Pomoy and Morisette are pretty good, but I was most impressed by Gary Valenciano who sings Chick Corea's jazz standard: Spain. It is amazing! Here's a low res version but with less ads in the middle.

I also can't help but share a few more Brexit funnies. At some point I feel the Queen's just going to line up those politicians and...

Clean house!

slakmehl (on getting further Brexit extension)
Because when you're sitting in a car with a perfectly good steering wheel careening towards a cliff, your only option is to figure out how to make the edge of the cliff slightly further away.

punchdrunkskunk
    Turns out Brexit negotiations are basically the Spice Girls:

    UK: I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
    EU: So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
    UK: I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
    EU: So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
    UK: I wanna Huh I wanna Huh I wanna Huh I wanna Huh
    EU: ...
    UK: I really, really, really wanna [unintelligible].
    EU: ...

Lastly, due to the fire at Notre Dame recently, Ubisoft are offering Assassin's Creed: Unity for free this week. As expected with this outcome, folks on reddit are now suggesting "We need to burn more historical monuments." LOL.

Design: Longer Combat isn't always more Fun

It's just more tedious.

[Part of the Design Folder]

How many times do you think you need to stab someone with a sword, or shoot with a gun, before they die, or at least are incapacitated enough to stop fighting? RPGs in particular have a nasty habit of making this number waaaay higher than it should be.

Yes, combat doesn't have to be realistic in games but it has to be fun! Dark Souls is a decent example as boss fights are varied enough to require learning and require no repetition (unless you fail), and that the more mundane enemies are often slain quickly, or quickly slay you.

The Assassin's Creed series was doing good too - using the counter-kill system which made combat through the swarms of baddies not only fun but kept the games tempo up. That is until they made AC: Unity. Gone is the counter-kill ability, replaced by parry / slash-slash-slash button mash. Oh, so just like Dark Souls right?

Wrong. Dark Souls has a wide array of enemies with different behavior patterns and attacks and as I said, combat ends quickly. AC: Unity has the same 4 dudes in various skins on an endless, respawning loop and some are HP sponges for no other reason than "this zone is harder, so the baddies should have more HP". They are also so frequent which ultimately makes them a chore rather than a fun experience. Stupid design Assassin's Creed: Unity. Stupid design.

Assassin's Creed: Unity

More RPG, more Pay to Win!

This time around we follow the would-be assassin Arno (and friends, if played co-op) as he awkwardly leaps, clambers and struggles to jump into the windows of Paris during the French Revolution. The city, which is packed to the brim with NPC crowds, is massive and well detailed, especially the building interiors. Arno himself is almost fully customizable in gear (think RPG type games) and attire and his story line is pretty decent.

Can't do away with the hood, no sir.

Alas, all that hard work is mostly undone by a number of issues - the first and foremost being greed. Like any Assassin's Creed game, there are a multitude of things to collect such as chests. This time around, they come in four colors: silver (open), red (locked), blue (for those who bought the DLC), and gold (pay to win). That's right. PAY TO WIN.

Obviously that hard curbed my usual kleptomania as by default, I cannot clear the map if I don't pay to win. Even the locked chests have their own problem in that they are inaccessible until you skill up in lock picking, but by the time you do you've probably got Cafe's already generating enough Francs that you can ignore them.

Also problematic are the controls, where the previously single parkour key was divided into "parkour up", "parkour down", and "jump into window / parkour forward". Due to how the map is created I understand why they needed such a system, but a more elegant solution would have simply been a single key that switches between those states. For me, this made Arno behave like a psychotic monkey which made it harder to evade gunfire.

Oh yes, pretty much every one has guns now - and Arno is a shit swordsman. He's the first assassin who cannot counter kill, instead relying on multiple strikes to end an opponent. Dude, if you can't kill a dude by hitting him once with a sword, you probably should stick to guns. Again, I can tell this was a poor design decision - because RPGs traditionally let you hit things a lot before they die.

As a result - do you remember those awesome times when any of the previous AC heroes could just walk into a literal army of enemies and come out on top? Well Arno can't do that. At some point you need to run or die. By default this makes him the worst fighter ever and just makes him even less fun to play since his attire is more heroic than he is.

All up, AC: Unity is not a -bad- game, but it's nowhere near as fun as its predecessors. I give it 2.5 pisspots out of 5 and only recommend it for die hard Creed fans. For everyone else, pick any of the earlier games for more fun.

Itch.io - Unnecessary Evil

Clever little platformer.

Behold your band of heroes!

I've only recently found out about Itch.io, another games trading site that has a large free games section. In there I found this clever little game that I thought I'd share: "Unnecessary Evil". It is a very short platformer that's a bit loose on copyright, but I can highly recommend to everyone. Give it a try if you have a few minutes! :)

Ori and the Blind Forest

Decent game, great story.

Made by Microsoft (in Unity) you'd expect big things from this platformer, and it does deliver. The story, music and art are all fantastic. It's in the gameplay where the flaws lie. You play as the titular Ori, a cute little rabbit of light who becomes a soul eating speedster at the conclusion of the prologue.

Combat is a mouse clicky affair in the first half of the game, and while you can out run all the enemies present you probably won't want to as eating their souls gives you XP. Enough XP lets you upgrade Ori to become a more lethal and more agile ninja, and in this game agility is key as you learn when you find the spirit trees (grave markers) of your other bunny kin so that you can eat their souls too.

Run little rabbit, run!

Unlike Hyperlight Drifter, the secrets here can all be found easily once Ori is upgraded fully. Also unlike Hyperlight Drifter, as you upgrade Ori the game gets significantly easier, which is good because by then you'll be tired of the instadeath traps and all that mouse clicking combat.

I quite like that in the later areas you actually need to keep the enemies alive to progress and that making a save point requires mana, otherwise you are stuck to using the few shrines that dot the impressively large map. All up it is a game I can recommend to those who enjoy platforming. As in really enjoy, as there are some jump puzzles here that are quite tricky (not Super Meat Boy bad though). I give Ori three and a half talking trees out of five.

Blaugust Staying Motivated Week: Reviews are a staple of my blog and for good reason - here's one I prepared earlier! :P

Hand of Fate

An adventure card game with the Batman: Arkham Series combat style!

This one took me a bit by surprise, having received it as a gift for Christmas. After a huge dose of WTF is going on right at the start, it wasn't long before I got into the swing of taking another "step" onto a card and hoping it would be something good.

Adventuring takes place on encounter cards.

Yes, exploration is done by flipping over cards and successfully completing encounters unlocks more cards which I found to be a neat way of having mini stories. These encounters are not necessarily combat, which plays much like the Batman: Arkham Asylum series except you're not Batman and the fights quickly go from being super easy to requiring some gamer skill.

The main goal is to beat each member of the courts of various suits: Dust (bandits), Plague (ratmen), Skulls (skelies), and Scales (lizardmen) and finally the very well voice acted Dealer who acts as the antagonist in the game.

Pretty cool for a Unity made game!

My favorite parts about it are you can customize your adventure deck with cards you have unlocked, tailoring what you can and what you won't run into on a quest - or have everything included in Endless mode. The way it is structure also allows you to progress despite dying/losing a game which is great design. Also, the final fight is very cool. Make sure you get to it. :)

This is definitely one I can recommend, and give it 4.5 minotaur tracks out of 5.

Assassin's Creed 3

New characters and beautiful maps really make the game worth exploring again.

It's great having first played Black Flag then going backwards to see the development process for the naval ship idea. In Revelations there was a segment where Ezio had to break out of a harbor which was pretty cool. The whole sailing part was already introduced here as sort of a side game, one of many given that there are board games and QTE hunting to do too. It's no secret the sailing segments are my favorite, but what else did I like?

The killing! Wait, you mean apart from the killing?

The many huge maps to explore, not just cities either. The open frontier is awesome, especially on horseback. At least when they give you the horse whistle ability. I also quite liked Desmond getting a chance to do more than just sit in the Animus, more than usual anyway in modern settings. Obviously they were testing to see how that could be done with the lack of haystacks these days. The solution is one they looked to be testing here: BASE jumping. I also quite liked the story of the whole thing and found the voice acting to be superb.

Having six unique recruits with their own abilities was also a lot better than the bunch of hard-to-remember throw aways added in Revelations, but ultimately unnecessary. After getting used to the slightly different controls it is business as usual for the assassin heroes who are like gods that can't even be put down by enemy firing lines as you regenerate quickly over time. Well, I still got thrashed by someone named "Rope Beater" a few times but he was a rare (and honestly, refreshing) exception. :P

This also seems to be where they worked on the notoriety system though it is a bit flawed in the execution here - why bribe criers or newspapers when pulling down three wanted posters is just as easy? Oh well.

On to the things I didn't like: There is a whole chapter in Native American. Yep. For some reason, the Animus which translated Altair and Ezio almost fully to English, fails to do it here. Why? That whole bit felt alienating but whatever. As a result I really disliked one of the main protagonists (Connor), not just because he's a douche bag but because of that. When he finally speaks English it's almost like I'm being introduced to a new character. One I don't really give a stuff about.

Moving on, the lock picking mini-game - stupid and a waste of time since there is really no threat to you while you do it. It's just there to slow you down. On the same vein, spelunking in large underground maps devoid of life is annoying (yet I still did it). Yes, I know they were trying to get the scale right or whatever but I'm just equating it to my maps in Neverwinter Online, no way would anyone get away with making such a sprawling and simultaneously boring place. 15 minute quests man. 15 minutes tops.

More to add to the useless list are: Hunting, Crafting and that god awful mini-management game. Why do they insist on putting that shitty management game? I know it continues on to Black Flag but I'll be glad if it is destroyed entirely. Fortunately it's not needed here and can be skipped, just like in the next game. I hope that people wise up and spend resources on something better than this crap. You also get a TON of tools you can use, but really you just need a sword, pistol and horse and you are set. Everything else is fluff.

Also, the Homestead missions. They are both really cool, and exceptionally stupid. Unfortunately, more on the stupid side of the scale. Oh, I could go try stop/win a war or you know, I could take the time to pick some flowers. The game also suffers from a long, unskippable credit roll and once again has some sort of PvP multiplayer attachment which instead of Abstergo training their own people is now better presented as an entertainment game. This sits a lot better and is followed through in Black Flag's main story, but is still just on the side content I'm not really interested in. If only they made a coop multiplayer version... I think that one is called Unity, right? :P

A definite improvement over Revelations but still nowhere near as good as Black Flag, I give this game three and a half arrows out of five.

Today I Smiled: Kitten Unity!

I know I'm quite behind in my Assassin's Creed having only recently watched the full AC: Unity trailer. Then I was impressed by some of the crazy cosplaying parkour guys that made their own version, but what has me smiling the most is this: Assassin's Creed Kitten Unity!

The Russian(?) creator, Mr.TVCow has some other funny vids too and I encourage you to check them all out. My second favorite is the Egg Destroyer Achievement video.

Anywho that's it for me, hope you all have a great day! ^_^

Attack on Titan - Tribute Game

With low res, polygonal graphics where your character and enemies look like dolls and houses look a bit like cubes, no music, spoilerific information that can give away a few plot points in the Attack on Titan anime/manga on which it was based, and a very sparse number of levels you would think that this free, Unity based tribute game by creator Feng Lee is a disastrous enterprise.

Well I can tell you that despite all those short falls the game itself is fantastic and can be surprisingly addictive, especially for fans of the series! It also has a pretty severe learning curve at the start where you will doubtlessly die many times while trying to get the hang of your 3D manoeuvring device.

Knowing where to fire your lines, when to let go and how long to press the gas button is your one advantage over the numerous, people eating titans who can easily kill you with one hit. You can do the same to them, provided you get to their weak spot at the nape of the neck. I've seen some awesome players who almost never touch the ground anymore with their skills.

How did I see this? Because you can play cooperatively! You can lure titans away for your allies to get easier kills, or save your friends from getting devoured if you are agile enough to get in a killing (or blinding) strike. There's room for improvement for sure, but even in its current state I give this game 4 out of 5 potatoes, and highly recommend everyone - especially fans of the series - to give it a try!

I also recommend having one of the songs from the OST playing in the background while doing so to really get you in the zone. Personally, I use DOA.