Day 19 - World of Goo and X-COM Interceptor

World of Goo 

Yet another indie game made with a tiny staff. I'm all for the indie scene, I can appreciate a game made simple and cheaply if it has a good premise, but I am definitely getting tired of PC games that don't have the basics of PC games. My first attempts at launching this game had my OS/Monitor freaking out over trying to achieve the resolution that WoG set out: 800x600. I find it hard to believe that in this day and age a game would default to that resolution, but there you have it. Furthermore, a search on the forum reveals that the only way to change it is by editing a .txt file in the folder. Hardly convenient, this is the type of experience I expect when playing some of the older titles on Steam, those not designed for modern operating systems, not something made in 2008.

Gameplay yet another physics-based puzzle game. This time around you use goo balls to create structures by connecting them as points in an ever growing lattice / grid. They will support a certain amount of weight, but the goo is not steel, and will tip or sway fairly easily. Your goal is to build towards the exit pipe in as little time as possible using as few of the goo balls as you can. Each level gives you a goal of how many balls to suck, with extra balls being set aside for the giant tower-bulding metagame, where you're pitted against others in a leaderboard style to see who can build the tallest structure. As you progress you'll use different type of goo balls with different properties, such as the green ones which can be moved and reused.

Some of the levels were challenging, although I beat all of them with plenty of extra goo balls. The game doesn't really give you much direction on how to build, but if you've played one physics-based puzzler, it's probably enough to understand how to put your tools to use to beat a level. Some of them towards the end of the first chapter were getting pretty crazy. In one particular level the goal was so high up that the only way I could beat it was building as fast as possible to reach the suction power of the pipe before my tower collapsed.

The game is decent, considering it was created by only two people, but I'm pretty sick of physics games, and to be honest I didn't understand enough of how the goo balls and structures work to get passed the point where a lot of it felt random. I played this game for 55 minutes, enough time to beat the first chapter and try the tower mode, and that's probably going to be it for me.

X-COM: Interceptor 

Interceptor, from what I experienced, felt like it was a bit closer to X-COM than Enforcer was. Your setting is moved into space, as a line of defense before the aliens can reach Earth. In this game you manage a base and pilot interceptor space crafts in order to dogfight with alien ships.

This game is very old, and it shows. The controls support the mouse, but you can tell it was designed for a time when people still owned joysticks, or preferred to use the keyboard. I hoped in without learning the controls, and nothing made sense. I died very quickly. My second attempt went a bit better, I spent about 5 minutes spinning around in space attempting to kill a ship, but ultimately failed once again.

At this point I gave up. It's nearly impossible to aim as your field of view is so small, and the ships move so fast that I spent my whole time chasing down an indicator arrow. The few times I was able to get the ship in my tiny FOV I had a hard time hitting it with my laser beams. Forget the missiles, as if there's a lock-on mechanic I was unable to find it.

This game was infuriating, and I failed to achieve anything and left with a very sour taste in my mouth. I only played for 14 minutes, and at least 3 of those minutes were trying to find the menu/quit button. Seriously, there is not a single icon on the screen that provides that option, and escape does nothing. In order to access the menu you have to move your mouse cursor to the top of the screen, where there is zero indication of a menu, and then WAIT, and finally a menu will appear. Why? There is absolutely no reason to hide a menu as small as that one is, on a screen with that much available real-estate. Truly infuriating experience that I have no intention whatsoever of coming back to.

Notes

This would have marked my 40th goal met if I had stuck with Interceptor for another 20 minutes. Not worth it, I would rather wait a day to hit 40 than lose 20 more minutes of my life to that game.

Album: Steam Challenge - Day 019

Day 17 - Plain Sight and Machinarium

Plain Sight 

I wasn't sure what to expect from this title based on the screenshots. I got a little worried when I saw XNA in the boot flow, as that's rarely the sign of a professionally made game. Plain Sight is a multiplayer game that pits robots against each other in small deathmatch arenas. Gameplay is fairly fast-paced, with robots jumping and boosting around, locking onto enemies and charging towards them. During all this, gravity is behaving very questionably, and any surface can be stepped on. It's all very disorienting, at the very least, and one of the greatest challenges is simply navigating around with the constantly changing horizon.

Your goal in Deathmatch is to kill enemies, which allows you to gain their energy (which starts at 1 but also includes the energy they stole through kills). Once you've passed a certain threshold you can hold E for a few seconds to detonate, turning your energy into points. You'll get multiplies in two ways: from normal kills and from self-destruct explosion kills. The multiplies will greatly increase the amount of points you gain from the self-destruct. Until you do this, however, you're vulnerable to being killed and losing all stored energy. It doesn't help that as your energy goes up, you become bigger, which helps you kill but also makes you a bigger, more tempting target.



If you can get past the chaos of it all, the game is actually pretty fun. There isn't much to the single-player experience, though, this is really a multiplayer game. I probably won't play any more beyond the 37 minutes I played, but I would bring this game out at a LAN party without hesitation.

I'm probably not doing a good job of explaining how fast paced and chaotic this game is, and how disorienting it can all be, so I've included gameplay footage of two short deathmatch games I played against the medium AI.

Machinarium 

Today is robot-awareness day, apparently. Machinarium is a flash game sold on Steam. I'm not even joking. Right-clicking, instead of being a useful button, brings up that annoying flash context menu, which is a terrible shame. You take on the role of a robot, and for no explained reason you start making your way towards... the right side of the screen, I guess. Gameplay consists on clicking to move to, interact with, pick up, use and combine items and the environment. You only use one button, and never the keyboard, in this title and it's infuriating at times.

Puzzles primarily consist of looking around to find what you can interact with, and then figuring out how to use it to move on. It's not terribly complicated, but the items usually blend in with the background environment and can be difficult to find. Combining items into others is usually pretty straight-forward, but the game doesn't allow any creativity. There is one, and only one, correct way to accomplish any given level, from what I saw.

The visual style is very unique, and probably the game's strong suit. It's got a hand-drawn style, and the world is a very interesting twist on robots living like humans. It's unfortunate that it's double letterboxed, but I really don't expect much from a flash game. I had no idea what the story was, or what was going on, but rather focused on progressing in the only direction I could. The main character occasionally has thought bubbles that appear to show him being bullied by the other robots, which I guess is leading up to why he's doing what he's doing? I don't know, as there's no text or speech there isn't much opportunity to tell a story.

I like this style of game, and I could look over a lot of the technical flaws if the game wasn't so damn slow-paced. The robot walks so slow, and that's only if you're the correct height. If you forget to adjust, and try walking while shrunk down or stretched out you'll waddle along at a snails pace. The fact that there's no way to interrupt walking to your destination doesn't help either. I played this game for 47 minutes, and I do not see myself coming back to it.

Notes

I went and got the Pillar of the Community badge on Steam the other day in hopes of getting invited to the new Steam Community Beta. No luck, so far. In order to do that, I had to upload a video, so I've been messing around with Youtube a bit. Yesterday I posted a video from my Quake 3 session, and today I added the Plain Sight gameplay video. The process to record, edit, compress and upload a video is a bit more time-consuming than I'd like, so I probably won't do these as a regular thing.

Album: Steam Challenge - Day 017

Day 15 - Cthulhu Saves the World and Quake III: Team Arena

Cthulhu Saves the World

I was looking forward to trying this game enough that I tagged it as one of my 10 "preferred" games, which doubles my target play time. Hopefully at the end of the challenge I'll be able to compare the games I tagged as preferred to those I beat / played a lot to see how accurate my guesses were.

CStW is an old-school style JRPG that looks like it could have been built using RPG Maker. Gameplay is your standard-fare SNES era JRPG, but with a sense of humor and doesn't-take-itself-seriously style of writing that sets it apart. The story starts out with Cthulhu losing his powers. He quickly discovers that his powers will return if he becomes a "True Hero", so there begins the slightly misguided quest to save the world.

As I mentioned, this game doesn't take itself seriously at all. All the monster descriptions are puns, Cthulhu frequently interacts with the narrator, your first party-member is a young woman who develops an instant crush on Cthulhu. I found the humor amusing enough, it's not too low-brow to be unenjoyable, but at the same time it's not terribly funny. There's very little over-arching storyline, mostly just an excuse to move forward on the linear path.

The game does a few unique things that I've never encountered in a JRPG before. The random encounters, for instance, have a cap based on the dungeon. Once the cap is reached, no more enemies will be encountered, but if you still want to fight you can always select "fight" from the menu. HP is regenerated to full after each fight, but MP is only returned a small amount, based on how quickly you complete the fight. This ensures that each fight is challenging, but that you have a pacing mechanism. The leveling system is cool, each time a character levels you're presented with two options on how to grow them. These could be different stat options, or opposing spells, or sometimes the single-target vs. multi-target spells, with each having different uses.

I played on Normal and still found the beginning very challenging. Having only two characters lead to one of them dying quickly VERY often. By the time I got my third character, though, things were getting quite easy, and the fourth just removed any need for strategy whatsoever. For those looking for a challenge, though, there are four different levels to play with.

I definitely enjoyed my time play CStW, but I don't know if I'll go back and finish it. I spent over 2 hours already, and completed 3 chapters. While I appreciated a lot of the unique gameplay, I'm not a huge fan of JRPGs nor was I crazy about their sense of humor.

QUAKE III: Team Arena

So soon after Quake 2, I get to try the third of the series. I have not played Q3 nearly as much as the second installment. Most of my memories of Q3 were playing on the Dreamcast, splitscreen, with my DC mouse. What little I played on the PC was more mod-based, such as Rocket Arena 3. Still, I booted up Team Arena and messed around with it for 44 minutes.


This installment adds color, which is nice, but not much else. Gone is the single-player campaign, as pointless as that was, but it made my experience less fun. I tried a deathmatch against the hardest level AI but got school 10 to 1, so I quickly moved down to "bring it on", which is about the middle difficulty, I believe. I played a few tournament modes, which are one on one deathmatches, and a CTF match. None were particularly entertaining with AI allies and opponents.

Team Arena messes a bit with base Q3 by adding new modes, power-ups and weapons. None of them really are needed, or work great, so I'm really not a huge fan of the tweaks. I'd play base game over this anyday, although I still prefer a modded Q2.

I'm sure there was a time in my life where this game was fun, but I've moved on, and there's little nostalgia leftover. I will not be coming back to this title.

Notes

I went back to Quake 2 a little, and progressed some. Unfortunately the game started getting quite difficult, and I was running low on health (no silly auto-regen mechanic here, just an equally rediculous mechanic where med kits can fix bullet holes and make you good as new). Unfortunately the campaign prevents you from changing the difficulty mid-run, so I'm not sure if I'll try to break that, press on or just give up.

The RNG failed me a bit as the upcoming games list features no fewer than three X-COM games.  Interceptor is unique enough, but TftD and Apocalypse are a little too close to each other that I'd rather not play both in one week. I'll probably skip one and save it for later.

Album: Steam Challenge - Day 015

Day 13 - SOL: Exodus and Swords and Soldiers HD

SOL: Exodus 

I bought this game because it reminded me of Freelancer, but I knew full-well it wasn't anything like it. In SOL: Exodus, the planet has become unlivable and toxic, so space ships are sent out on scouting missions in an attempt to locate a new world they can mess up. The game starts off with you locating a liveable planet, but quickly being attacked by a hostile alien race and forced to run away. Fast-forward to 10-years later, the newly promoted commander reaches SOL to inform everyone of the planet, and is quickly attacked by COD fighters.

I'm not really sure what's going on here, the story didn't make a whole lot of sense, and felt more like an excuse to trigger a lot of battles. Combat is similar enough to freelancer, but faster paced. Controls are a bit weird, though. Sure, you use the mouse to move around, and Q and E rotate your ship along the third axis, but W and A fire two of your weapons. Even after 41 minutes of playing, I was still accidentally firing unlocked missiles thanks to the W key. Enemies dies pretty easy, and there's always a dozen more for you to take on.

What really feels odd about this game is that you're always on your own. Sure, you'll have a large ship by your side, but that's really just a giant target with a health bar, ensuring you beat the level in an appropriate amount of time. Mostly it's just you against the hordes of smaller ships. Those aren't so bad, but when you have to take on a frigate or two by yourself, it's just doesn't make any sense.

SOL: Exodus isn't bad, but there's nothing about it to draw me in. Mindless combat that doesn't do much to draw me, and a story that makes no sense at all, and is just full of cliches. I do not foresee myself playing the game any more than I have so far. Freelancer on the other hand...

Swords and Soldiers HD

Yet another game that feels like it was once a flash game, turned into a full title. Gameplay consists of building units and casting spells. Most levels start with you creating a few more gold-gathering wenches, then using your upgrade panel to make a few other units and spells available. Once you start creating battle units, they will start walking forward until they reach an enemy, and will then fight to the death. If victorious, they will continue walking forward. What you get, then, is a steady stream of units constantly moving towards the right of the screen.

The story was mildly amusing, at least on the Viking campaign. These guys love meat, and most of the campaign revolves around protecting your meat, and then eventually seeking the largest chili in order to make the best hot sauce. It's ridiculous, but fun, and lays down a loose reason for each encounter. The enemy types vary quite a bit, with some of the larger units being quite challenging.

Overall I found the game fun enough, but it's also extremely repetitive. You don't have a whole lot of control over things, so it's mostly repeating the same setup, build and fight phases each level. It takes a long time for the units to make their way to the front lines, even with the rage spell, so you're better off just constantly making units. My favorite spell is definitely heal, and I find it the most useful as these guys do not last long when being focused on. I played this game for 60 minutes and almost completed the first campaign, but I don't see myself coming back to what is essentially a mobile game ported to PC.

Notes

I beat the Massive Munich campaign in CiM, and attempted to move onto the US Cities DLC. Unfortunately the San Francisco map is causing me quite a bit of difficulty. It's a fairly large map, and they don't give you any basic lines to start from, so I'm finding being profitable and building a base to expand upon incredibly difficult. I will keep trying, though, and see if I can succeed, as San Francisco is definitely a cool city. I've always been fairly impressed with the combination of Muni, BART and Caltrain, so I'm looking forward to trying to improve upon their model.

I've met the goal for 28 games so far, with 233 still to go!


Album: Steam Challenge - Day 013

Day 12 - VVVVVV and Dear Esther

VVVVVV

This platformer is similar in looks and style to Super Meat Boy, but with a slighter lower difficulty. The game is of very simple design, giving very few options and just generally feeling old. This was also the only game I've played so far that didn't support steam screenshots or fraps either, so I was much more limited in my screenshot taking.

Gameplay is fast-paced platforming. You have three controls, left, right and action. The Action button does the basic things such as progressing the text and activating menus, but in gameplay this button reverses gravity for you. This means the majority of puzzles involve flipping the world around to get by obstacles. This makes the game simple and fast paced, but challenging nonetheless.

The world is fairly unique for a platformer. Each screen represents one tiny section of the world, and the levels are tucked into different corners. If you look at the map I uncovered (potential spoilers, I guess, don't click if you want to explore on your own), you'll see that there are different colored areas that represent the levels, typically a series of rooms you must take on in order. The grey area represents the overworld, and your oportunity to locate other levels. Just to make sure you don't get loes, computer screens will show you key areas on the map.

Despite the very basic graphics and the fact that it's a platformer, I really enjoyed this game. It's simple but challenging, and fast-paced and action packed. The one-big map is definitely cool and reminds me of Castlevania. I will likely come back to this game when I'm looking for simple platforming.

Dear Esther

Originally a mod, Dear Esther was recently remade as an indie title. There isn't much game to this title, which bills itself as a "pure story-driven experience", in fact I was able to beat the whole thing in 70 minutes. You're given free reign to explore the largely linear island, and occasionally the narrator reads from some letters. The controls are very simple, WASD to move, Q to swim up and that's it. Your character walks at a normal pace, giving you ample opportunity to admire the surrounding landscape.

Speaking of landscape, it's gorgeous. This is the source engine at it's finest. So much effort was put into every little bit of the island, with amazing detail. The landscape is bright and lively, the caves are amazing and unique and the sights are breathtaking. Even the insides of long abandoned buildings are detailed with little touches that add to the detail. Dear Esther is littered with tiny details so subtle you probably won't notice them the first time. Check out the album for more screenshots, but be warned, the screenshots encapsulate the majority of the game. I avoided taking any screenshots of the subtitles, to not give away anything, but the pictures themselves show me progressing through the entirety of the extremely short experience.


I guess this one counts as complete, because I was able to beat the whole thing. I'm not counting it towards the 10 games I've set as my goal, however, as the who experience was done in a little over one hour. I definitely suggest experiencing this game for yourself, but not at $10.

 

Notes

I'm still playing CiM. I'm into the second scenario of the Munich Madness campaign. This one sets you up with a much better metro system, which I've expanded upon, so I'm now filthy, stinking rich.

Album: Steam Challenge - Day 012

Day 10 - Diner Dash: Hometown Hero and Peggle Deluxe

Diner Dash: Hometown Hero

In this game you play a waitress named Flo, and your task is to make sure all the guests at your restaurant are happy. Basic tasks consist of seating the guests, taking their order, bringing their food, giving them their bill and finally busing the table. All this is achieved by clicking the appropriate location and watching Flo go.

The game is relatively simple, but can be challenging. There's always a lot to do, and the customers aren't terribly patient. As the game progresses, more advanced things get added, for instance there are teenagers with their cell phones who will annoy nearby customers, but if you seat them next to teenagers of the opposite gender they'll be too busy flirting to use their phones. Certain tables are reserved, and customers will expect to be seated for their reservation almost immediately. With all that in mind, many of the level goals are actually fairly challenging, requiring precision and thoughtful seating.

I was kind of bored playing through this, as I'm stuck in the campaign mode. I cannot beat the final zoo level for the life of me, and for some reason the game crashes when I select the ballpark. Endless Shift mode is alright, but it always ends the same way, with getting overwhelmed and having too many customers leave. I busied myself with re-playing the middle levels until my 37 minutes were up.

 

 

 

Peggle Deluxe

I imagine everyone has heard of Peggle by now, it was the casual game of choice a few years ago. For those who haven't, the goal of Peggle is to shoot your balls into pegs, trying to collect all the orange pegs to finish the level. Gameplay is simple enough, and the random nature means that even if you're having trouble beating a level, a bit of tweaking can lead to the run you needed to finish it up.

Peggle Deluxe comes with a ton of levels. The adventure mode includes 55 levels, after which Challenge mode is unlocked. It's a fun distraction, not requiring much thought, but still not mindlessly easy. I'm sure I'll come back to this title over the years when I'm looking for that quick distraction.

Notes

I'm still playing CiM, the campaign I started is progressing nicely, and the tweaks I made seem to have rendered the game more stable. For those wanting to know, I lowered the settings significantly and started launching the title without Steam. I'm not sure which is doing the trick, but all is well now.

Album: Steam Challenge - Day 010

Day 9 - Quake II and Max and the Magic Marker

QUAKE II

I've played a lot of Quake in my day, and Quake 1 was a little too early for me, and I didn't play much beyond the shareware version, but I spent many hours playing Quake 2 online. All that, I'm ashamed to say, was done with a less than legitimate copy of the game, so I was happy to give this another go, for nostalgia's sake.

Quake is an ugly game, no doubt. Even the addition of OpenGL didn't help that much, and it wasn't until Q3 that color was added to the pallet. Still, the game is the same old fast-paced action-fest it's always been. I opted to start a new single-player game on hard, which is a higher difficulty than I typically take, but I felt anything less would be an insult.

There isn't much to say, really. I would go out and suggest you play Q2 if you don't have a solid reason to. It's a corridor shooter, that is insanely fast paced, and has no storyline to speak of. Yes, there are a few cutscenes, and this title actually gives you mission objectives, but I ignored all of it and it didn't change a thing. The weapons are satisfying, the enemies are challenging, but not absurd, and the levels give you the freedom to pass through using multiple paths.


I may decide to come back to this game and finish my playthrough, as there I definitely hold a soft-spot for this game, but we'll see. Singleplayer was never the strength of the Quake series, and there's only so many brown corridors you can shoot your way through before it gets old. If I do opt to continue the playthrough, I'll definitely lower the difficulty so that I can breeze through everything. What can I say, I'm lazy!

Max and the Magic Marker

Physics-based puzzle games are quite popular these days. Max and the Magic Marker takes on the genre but gives it a kid-friendly spin. Gameplay is basic platforming with one exception, your magic marker. As you play you'll collect ink orbs, which allow you to draw with your magic marker. Anything you draw becomes physical, and can then be interacted with. For instance, earlier puzzles have you making a basic plank bridge, nothing fancy. You'll make a lot of steps to climb things as well. You can retrieve ink from an item at anytime, so puzzles are more based on your effective use of the available ink, and trial and error is encouraged.

There's a few interesting challenges, but nothing too difficult. I managed to get the majority of the collectables that I could find, and only really got blocked in one instance, and orb that was just slightly out of reach with the amount of ink I possessed. Checkpoints are littered all over the levels, which is good because death is instantaneous if you touch one of the many hazards that Max hates. Each checkpoint also saps all your ink, making each checkpoint a unique challenge that's not dependent on your success or failure in previous parts of the level.

I don't really care for platformers or physics-based puzzle games, so I don't foresee myself playing this game further than the 47 minutes I did today.

Notes

I keep wanting to play more Cities in Motion. I considered making it one of my games to beat, and even started a new campaign with the intention of progressing through it. Unfortunately, the game has proven quite unstable, and lacks an autosave. I can't seem to play the Tokyo map for more than 5 minutes without a hang, and I spent an hour working on the Munich map without saving when it froze on me. I'll do a bit of research, as if I could make it stable then completing a campaign would be a lot of fun.

Album: Steam Challenge - Day 009

Day 6 - Thief II and Book of Legends

Thief II: The Metal Age 

The Thief series is an amazing series for those with patience. Unfortunately, that was never me, so my experience playing has always been limited. For the uninitiated, in this game you take on the role of a thief who accepts jobs which generally involve stealthing, breaking into and stealing from locations secured by guards. The game generally provides you with an several options on how to proceed, as well as plenty of option loot you can steal along the way.

You're provided a fair amount of tools and weapons to get the job done. The trusty Blackjack is an excellent tool for knocking guards out, if you can catch them unaware. Your water arrows can knock out torches, but not all lights, just as your lockpicks can open some locks, but not all.

In my 98 minutes playing, I completed the first two levels. The first being a relatively linear task which serves as a sort of tutorial. The second level opens up much more, and gives you a warehouse complex, packed with guards, to explore. Your primary goal is simple to steal 500 gold worth of valuables, and you are given plenty of opportunities to do so.

Stealth naturally plays a huge part of the game, and I found myself constantly seeking ways to get behind the guards without being seen. Knocking them out was easy enough, allowing me free reign to run around my secured areas. That's good, because the walking speed is slow, crouched or standing. Even the running speed isn't all that great. And there's a lot to do, and plenty of secrets to find. Even after 50 minutes on the second level, I only managed to collect 676 gold worth of loot of a possible 1811, and located only 1 of 13 secrets.

Thief: Deadly Shadows, the third installment of the series, is number 113 on my list, and Thief: Gold, the expanded original lies at number 156. I'm looking forward to trying both of those later on, as I definitely liked my experience playing today.

Book of Legends

Book of Legends is a find the hidden item type game with a Dan Brown style story, and slightly higher production values. The story starts out with a young man locating the secret "Book of Legends", but is being chased. Naturally he does what you'd expect any young man to do in his shoes: he mails the book to his sister. She doesn't take it seriously at all until some men in black come knocking on her door. Yeah, the story is pretty stupid, it's mostly an excuse to send you from location to location.

You'll start off in Washington, DC, where the book will lead you to your first clue and location. In each scene you have to use the clue from the Book of Legends linked to it to discover the secret, which will lead you to the next location. It seems like if you have a book with locations and clues you could do a lot better than starting at the beginning and hoping all around town, but what do I know?

After you complete a location you can do jobs there for money. These tasks are generally extremely simple and go by very fast. You'll have to do these, as you quickly finish up with Washington and have to pay a very expensive plane ticket to continue.

Overall, I'd say this game is probably the best "find the hidden item" game I've ever played, but in the end it's still a game in a genre that is more aimed towards young children. I see no reason I would continue to play this game beyond the 40 minutes I did to meet my goal.

Notes

I went back to Toki Tori this morning and almost immediately I beat the level that had me stumped yesterday. It's amazing what a fresh look will do in that sort of game. The solution wasn't even complex, and I was disappointed in myself for not seeing it earlier, but that's how it is sometimes.

Album: Steam Challenge: Day 006

Day 5 - Toki Tori and Patrician III

Toki Tori

My first experience with Toki Tori was as an android game, where I played very briefly and lost interest. The game concept is simple enough; your space chicken will teleport into the level, and you must guide it towards all the eggs to collect them so he can teleport out. Gameplay consists of moving the character and using the limited and unlimited powers that are a part of the puzzle. Some examples are the ability to lay a bridge tile, teleport a short distance and move bricks behind you. From what I experienced in the first 2nd set of levels, each puzzle is designed to give you sufficient abilities to complete the level, but usually only if you're efficient and follow the correct path. Logic plays a big part here, but thankfully there's a rewind feature to prevent trial-and-error from becoming tedious.

By the end of the 2nd world the levels were getting decently challenging. I was unable to solve the final puzzle as I eventually ran out of ideas. The game gives you a wild card, which is the ability to skip one level per set, to prevent you from halting completely. If you go back to beat the wildcard level you get it back, and can use it elsewhere. There's also a hard mode which I did not try.

For some reason it feels like this game just isn't made for PC. It could be the fact that you can't use WASD to move your space chicken, or the main menu that really looks like a mobile app, perhaps it's the lack of visible hotkeys for your abilities. Something just didn't click. A huge annoyance is that you have to scroll around to see the whole level, making it annoying to plot a route on a new challenge. I may come back to this title for the challenge alone, as that unfinished level continues to taunt me.

Patrician III

I'm not familiar with the Patrician series, but I do love trading and business sims. This particular title is definitely dated, the included setup app asks you to test resolutions to know what's supported, and caps out at 1280x1024x32. After selecting the highest resolution and attempting to launch the game it provided me with an obscure error about 800x600 not working! I fiddled around with it some more, and followed the suggestion on the Steam forum to add the title to the DEP exclusion list and eventually got the title running.

I started by launching the tutorial, because I thought I should learn to play properly for once, but that turned out to be completely non-interactive, and merely a long series of tiny text messages in the bottom corner of the screen. So I decided not to learn how to play the game, and jump straight into the campaign. There's a series of campaigns, and the one I selected was designed as an introduction. You will occasionally receive tips on how to proceed, such as what to trade for, and where, when to build, etc. Naturally, I ignored the majority of the tips and played with mixed success.

Trading is relatively simple, and there aren't so many goods that you can't remember them all. Towns produce and use goods and raw materials. You can build these facilities yourself, or rely on those available to other towns. Some simple trade routes were suggested at the beginning, with more advanced ones suggested when you can afford the more expensive items. I found myself simply going from town to town along the coast, picking up what was cheap and selling what was profitable. This worked well enough to get me money, but did not advance my career much.

There's some sort of mechanic with home towns that I clearly wasn't getting. For every trade you make, in any town, you will gain or lose reputation. Selling much needed goods to a town increases your reputation while buying the last of their stock lowers it. The game suggests many ways to increase your reputation in your home town, but it did not work out well for me, and my home town wasn't particularly fond of me. Meh, screw them, I'm rich.

The game was easy enough to pick up and play. Even though I only played for an hour and a half, I can see how it expands. You can buy additional ships, there's naval combat, although I don't know if it's interactive, and the production-chain mechanics are all here. I like this sort of game, and Patrician III did feel faster paced than Port Royale 2, so I may come back to it later.

Notes

12 games played, 249 to go. This is going to take a while.

Album: Steam Challenge: Day 005

Day 4 - The Last Remnant and Delve Deeper

The Last Remnant

Square Enix JRPG that looks an awful lot like Final Fantasy 11/14. The first thing I noticed here was that I needed to find my controller. The game supports keyboard, but not mouse, and all the callouts are for an Xbox 360 controller. The game opens up with a large-scale battle and some sort of weapon called the "Gae Bolg", which is pronounced just like my dirty mind expects it to.
You're briefly introduced to the battle system, but it's not until later that any of it makes sense. Characters are played as parts of a unit, which could be 2-6 characters, and you'll control multiple units in one battle. Your actions aren't numerous, at least not at this stage, and you can't control individuals. The unit will take your order and execute them on the battle in somewhat real time, and positioning seems to play somewhat of a part. The game does large-scale battles fairly interestingly, and I'm curious to see how it develops.

I only played for a little under an hour and a half, and this is a JRPG, so naturally the story didn't make any sense at all. The main character, who is searching for his kidnapped sister, doesn't seem to have any idea what he's doing or where he is. The people around him aren't the most informative either. There's a lot of hinting that the Remnants, which appear to be magical weapons, while very useful have a high cost. I'm sure there will be plenty of ethical, moral and philosophical speeches about the Remnants throughout the game.

I'm not crazy about JRPGs, and I only own this because of the Square Enix Complete pack. It looks pretty enough, and aside from the controller issues it feels good on the PC, but I don't think I want to play this any more than I have already.

Delve Deeper

Delve Deeper is a turn-based strategy game with a simple concept: venture down and collect treasure. It played as a multiplayer vs match, where each game has a set number of turns and all players share the same board. You'll control 5 dwarves which fall under three classes: Miner, Warrior and Scout, each with different attack, movement and item-carrying capacities. Each turn allows you to place one tile, to expand the network, and then move each dwarf.

Tunnels have valuable ore in them, depending on how deep you are they get more valuable. Ending a dwarf collects the ore, which can then be sold from your home base or a Teller in the caves. You'll also encounter enemies which can be killed for loot. Tougher enemies appear further down.

I really did not enjoy this game. Your actions per turn are very limited, and the game insist on showing you every other player's actions too. At the default speed that meant about a minute or two in between my turns as all 3 other players and the monsters each played one by one. I raised the speed to the maximum level "Ludicrous", but it still took longer than I'd like. The game itself isn't very deep, and I don't care to go back for it. If you're really in need of dwarven mining, check out Dwarfs!? instead.

Notes

Two uninspiring games of vastly different budgets, but nothing that caught my interest. I wanted to play The Last Remnant more as JRPGs take time to get going, but I found myself drifting to sleep.

11.5 hours down, 188 to go!


Album: Steam Challenge: Day 004

Day 2 - Space Empires IV, DEFCON, Section 8 and AudioSurf

Space Empires IV Deluxe

4X games can be amazing fun. I have very fond memories of playing Master of Orion (and slightly less fond memories of the two sequels). They also tend to be the turn-based strategy games that require the most micromanagement, and that can get tedious very quickly, and can be so complex that it's near impossible to get into it.
Space Empires IV is old enough that it only supports one resolution: 1024x768. If you play on anything higher you get letterboxing so bad you'll have to squint to read anything. I tried to find a patch or fix but in the end I opted for dropping my resolution down. The interface itself is not very intuitive, and there's so much data to be seen, but luckily the game itself isn't too complicated. I've played SE4 before, so I was able to skip the tutorial and hop right in.
As a passive player, I focused on research and colonization, making friends with the locals. Most of them were more than willing to engage in trade with me, save for one unfortunate event where one of my scouts got stuck in foreign territory and it got shot down. By the end of my 3 hours of playing I had 15 colonies in 4 systems and was in the process of building up a fleet, which I'm not ashamed to admit was not for self-defense purposes.

SE4 is definitely not a game for short sessions. Even with 3 hours of play, there were still plenty of expansion opportunities out there that didn't require going to war. Not to mention I barely scratched the surface of the research opportunities. Definitely a very enjoyable game, and the ship design element is just the level of customization I love to have in 4X games. I hope to come back to Emperor Viper and the Viper Empire (I'm great at making original names, aren't I?) before I forget where I stand and what my plans were. I'm also looking forward to seeing how Space Empires V compares, as I never tried it in the past.

DEFCON

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, but I didn't think it would be on day 2. I could only stand to play DEFCON for 27 minutes, while my goal was set at 41. I have no one but myself to blame though, as I didn't know what I was doing. I had played the tutorial in the past, and really didn't feel like sitting through it again, so I thought I'd hop on against and AI and wing it. Well, I lost. And I lost HARD.
For those of you who have not tried DEFCON before, it's basically a strategy game involving global thermonuclear war. You place the predetermined amount of radars, missile silos and air bases around your country, and deploy your fleet in the surrounding waters. Every item has it's purpose, radars detect enemies and shoot down air support, silos nuke enemy cities and defend against incoming nukes. The strategy comes into play in where you place your resources, and how you use them, and I definitely did not have the strategy.
DEFCON stays on the list, and maybe I'll come back to it later.

Section 8

I'm not really sure how I ended up with this game, as I knew nothing about it and what to expect. Section 8 feels like a title that was designed for multiplayer, with elements from Unreal Tournament, Tribes and Enemy Territory mixed in. The single-player campaign is listed in the main menu as the third option, further cementing my opinion that the title is MP first. There's next to no story, I played through the first 3 missions and learned little other than the fact that you're a soldier that drops down onto a planet via drop-ship and fights an enemy. I'm not even quite sure if they're supposed to be aliens or not, but I assume so.
Gameplay-wise it's your standard objectived based missions. Go to point A, secure the area, activate the console, etc. Then a checkpoint is reached and you move on to the next objective. I can see this working very well in a multiplayer environment, with the offense pushing in and the defense attempting to hold them back.

To help you in this you can customize your loadouts. In the campaign you unlock items relatively slowly, so by the 3rd mission I had tried 4 weapons and little else. You also get to select 10 passive slots, which do things like give you enhanced attack power, armor, shields, etc. It feels a lot like Tribes, but I don't know if the customization goes as deep.
Speaking of Tribes, there's also jetpacks and vehicles, although both are a lot more limited. Your jetpack can only fly for a few seconds, and then needs to recharge, so you don't really get the aerial battles. The vehicles seem to be ordered by spending money. I'm not sure how that mechanic works in MP, but in the campaign there's a few places where you're given money and told to call in turrets or a tank.
The game is decently paced, but it's obviously a multiplayer game. The large-scale maps and jetpacks make me shy away, as games with those features tend to have much higher learning curves. I played this game for 54 minutes, and I think that's probably enough.

AudioSurf

Rhythm games are definitely one of my favourite genres, but I'm not entirely sure AudioSurf falls into that category. It's definitely a music game, but you don't play music to a beat. Instead you pilot a ship flying down a track that rises, falls and curves to the beat of your music. Your goal is to pick up the colored blocks that are on the path and align them into connected groups of three.
Different characters have different abilities and mechanics. For example, the Mono is quite simple, grab the colored blocks and avoid the grey ones. The pusher, on the other hand, can push a block left or right depending on what mouse button you're holding when you grab it.
I had already played AudioSurf a bit in the past, and today's 50 minutes helped confirm that I'm not really a fan of this game. Yes, the fact that you can play with your own library is amazing, but the game itself just doesn't appeal to me, and feels only loosely connected to your music.

Notes

I had to skip two titles from the list today. I had assumed that Overlord: Raising Hell was a standalone title, as it appears in the Steam game list. It turns out, though, if you don't have Overlord installed the game simply does not launch. No error message or anything, either. I'll grab Overlord and come back to it later.
On a similar note, The Last Remnant was on the list, but I haven't downloaded it yet. I'm on a monthly limit of 120GB with my ISP, so 12GB downloads really take their toll. For now it remains unplayed.

7.6 hours played, 191 to go!

Album: Steam Challenge: Day 002

Day 1 - Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Half-life 2: Episode One and RUSH

Tomb Raider: Anniversary

The first game on my list is Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and also the first of many games I own as part of the Square Enix Complete pack I bought a few years back. I haven't played a Tomb Raider game since the original in '96, but I do have fond memories of jumping around and killing bears. Having been one of the first games I got to try on the Saturn helps cement it in my memory.
I played for 43 minutes, finishing the first two levels, and I still don't really know what the story is about. Generic excuse to explore tombs, I suppose. The climbing and jumping leaves a lot to be desired. Look at the uncharted series for a good example of how to do jumping and climbing in a way that doesn't lead to constantly jumping towards things that look like ledges, but aren't. The camera doesn't help much either, flat out refusing to let you see what's behind you.
I think it's safe to say Tomb Raider doesn't really stand up to the test of time and move on.

Half-Life 2: Episode One

I know I should be excited to have such an awesome game come up so soon, but Half-Life was never something I could get into. Half-Life 1, 2 and both Episodes remain unfinished to this day. The fact that Episode One relies heavily on the gravity gun kind of ruins it for me. Through the 55 minutes I played I did not receive any other weapon, but the game doesn't have Portal's pacing, and I definitely miss having a pistol or rifle.
The voice acting and animations are decent, the presentation is definitely there, but as a shooter is just a little slow-paced for me. The game also did not appreciate my alt+tabbing, and crashed on me three times. I don't see myself coming back to this title, at least until I complete Half-Life 2 itself.

RUSH

I'm not sure how I ended up with this title, it was probably included in an indie bundle at some point. Very simple puzzle game where your goal is to guide the cubes into their respective exit points by placing a limited amount of tiles you're provided. Simple, but very fun, and some of the levels were pretty challenging. I got through all of the Easy puzzles and a few of the Medium ones in the 50 minutes I played, but I can already see the pace slowing as the puzzles get more challenging.'
I'm a sucker for a good puzzle game, especially one where you can take your time to solve each problem. I will definitely check this game out more in the future.

Notes

I'd say I got pretty lucky with games for the first day. Nothing terrible, and I enjoyed my time with RUSH more than I expected. X-COM: Enforcer was supposed to be the third title, but AVG threw out a virus warning. I'll have to research that further before proceeding, but for now it's temporarily skipped.

2.5 hours down, 194 to go!

Album: Steam Challenge: Day 001