Obviously, I procrastinated. And, I haven’t finished it, so I still am lacking that gamer cred. But at least now I can say “Oh yeah, I’ve played Portal.” right?
No spoilers here – although if you’ve somehow both never played Portal and have managed to avoid spoilers, kudos to you. I played for just short of an hour, so even though part of me is feeling super clever for clearing 14 tests in that time, part of me knows that there is still way more game in front of me than behind me.
Here’s the thing – I just don’t have the brainpower for these kind of puzzles (especially since spatial relations aren’t my strongest suit to begin with). I started to get frustrated when I could clearly see how everything worked, but I kept missing (really really easy) jumps. Finally moving through that test to one I couldn’t figure out told me that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the game for the moment.
Which is okay, really.
I’m glad I gave it a whirl, and I definitely plan to revisit it on a day I’m in the mood to just figure things out.
When it comes to mobile gaming, I tend to gravitate towards very casual games, which usually leads to having half a dozen different match three or hidden object games to choose from.
However, for #MitsudaMarch, I downloaded something with a little more meat on its bones, and I’m really loving Another Eden so far. Sure, it’s pretty far outside what I normally play on any platform, and I am 100% bumbling through it.
I can’t tell you for certain how much time I’ve played it overall (I did poke at it when I first downloaded it last month, and I started playing it fairly regularly a couple of days early), but my iPhone’s Screen Time setting tells me I’ve already put in almost six hours this week.
I think what’s surprised me the most so far is how meaty the game feels. Just about everything you do earns you Chrono Stones, which can be spent in the Gallery of Dreams to unlock more characters for your party. A full party (including backline) is only six characters deep, so it doesn’t take that long to get a full party together as a free player.
The core game play is full of random encounters with simultaneous turn-based combat. It’s necessary to pre-select your party, and when you run into an enemy (or more often, a group of enemies), you can choose what each front-line party member does before activating your turn. It’s not a combat style I’ve overly familiar with, but I think it works well for a mobile game.
Another Eden looks great, it sounds great, and once you get into the swing of things, it plays great.
As with any free-to-play game, there are microtransactions, and things that can only be bought with premium currency. So far, I don’t feel like I’m at any sort of disadvantage by not spending, but I assume at some point, the story will run out, and making a purchase will be necessary to continue. At this point, that’s really just an assumption, though – so far it seems that the only things that cost to unlock are additional characters. Based on the prices of Chrono Stones in the app, and the costs of character unlocks with free Chrono Stones, it looks like you can expect to spend anywhere from $2.40 to $5 to unlock a single premium character.
Overall, this is a nifty little package of fun, and I’m grateful to the folks at The Community Game Along for #MitsudaMarch, because I never would have discovered this little mobile gaming gem otherwise.
If you’ve played through pretty much any of the Elder Scrolls Online base game content, you’ve likely run into Razum-dar, Naryu, or Darien (depending on your faction). At least for the moment, you can try to romance the character of your choice in a super-short dating sim available on the Elder Scrolls Online website.
I have no idea how long the game is going to be around, but you can absolutely play it a matter of minutes per character, so if you’ve ever daydreamed about one of these ESO heart throbs, now is your chance.
So, I’ve been seeing a lot of entries popping up the past day or so talking about loving our backlogs, so I went back to the source, and then decided I could get on this bandwagon as well.
I actually love my backlog (or library, as I prefer to call it) all the time! What could be better than hours upon hours of entertainment right at my fingertips?
Starting from my GoG Galaxy stats, and adding in my Twitch games, as well as games I have on Itch.io and some others that are on stand alone launchers or that are DRM free, I’ve skyrocketed past 3000 games. Sure, they’re not all backlog titles per se – some I’ve finished, and some others I’m unlikely to ever return to for one reason or another. But they’re there, and I could play any of them at any time.
Nothing wrong with a 10,000 hour library, right?
And with that giant admission out of the way, on to the questions!
A game you’re eager to play, but haven’t yet started:
I was under the mistaken impression that I could play Ori and the Blind Forest on easy and it would be … well, easy.
Instead, I played it for several days in 10 minute increments, and quite honestly, didn’t get very far. Having been a PC gamer from a pretty young age, I never really worked on my platforming chops as a kid, and now that I’m over 40 and my reaction times aren’t what they once were, it’s really challenging to get to a place where most platforming games, even on easy, are something I can tackle without getting frustrated.
How long does it take to stop being teh suck at platforming games???
Instead, I decided to redirect my efforts. Although I’d still like to participate in #platformonth with the Community Game-A-Long, I’d like something that I have a chance of completing before the month is out. So I dug through my Steam library and came up with another option.
Not only is Type:Rider totally my aesthetic, it’s also gloriously simple. Maybe too simple, because it gets reviews like this one.
A very simplistic platformer, with not much going for it. Sign. Me. Up.
But it’s lovely. And easy. And short. I will ride the inertia and gape at the stunning visuals, and any letters I miss on the way by will stay missed. I’m very okay with that.
For someone who is meticulous about being timely IRL, I still can procrastinate for the Olympics. I feel like this post has a sort of an Inception-style thing going on for it, because it’s a short story about waiting until the absolutely last minute, and also, it’s written and posted more than a week after I intended to.
Sorry about that, folks.
It seems like it’s been forever since the information about the 15th Anniversary event in WoW came out, and I was pretty sure I was going to reactivate my WoW sub in November to take advantage of it.
Then, I saw that the event was going to be a long one, running all the way through January 7th, so there was no rush. And rush I absolutely did not. Before I knew it, November had disappeared, and then it was December and I was stuck in bed sick for over a week, and then it was the holidays, and that token just never got spent.
At the beginning of January, I again claimed I was going to get my act together and go get that Deathwing mount. Finally, on Sunday, January 5th, a mere 48ish hours before the even was over, I reactiavted my account.
And after approximately 10 months off, I had to remember how to play (thank goodness for muscle memory), scrounge up 10 item levels, and actually get through all three LFR events. Easy peasy.
Having missed at least a couple of patches, making up that iLvl was far easier than I could have hoped. One random world quest for a trinket, and several quick upgrades while opening up Najatar (not to mention the hella boost to my necklace), and I hit 380.
All in all, it was easier than I anticipated all around. Monday evening, my husband and I started queuing up for the LFRs (I know, I know!!!) – Outlands was flawless, Northrend was … less flawless (stupid dance, stupid defile, stupid old person memory for mechanics), and we only had one wipe on Cho’Gall in the Cataclysm content. The whole shebang, including figuring out how the heck one gets to The Caverns of Time these days, took about two and a half hours.
So, let’s say that this mount took approximately 5 hours of effort, and about two months of procrastination.
As it stands now, I have not logged back into WoW since then – I still have 20 days remaining on my sub – and yet, I’m still thinking about going back for real for Shadowlands.
If I had given myself an actual budget for this winter sales period, I would be so very far over it. However, my gift purchasing came in under the $50 I allot myself, and my person purchases on Steam proper did as well.
So what did I buy?
Crest: The Indirect God Sim – $2.99
The reviews may not be stellar, but actual indirect control god games are hard to come by, and I’d rather spend $3 than drop than $22 to pick up Godhood, which I still expect to drop or be bundled in time. Kind of an impulse purchase, but it’s been on my wishlist for a long time, and it was at an all-time low.
Peace, Death + Hand of F DLC – $2.38
Somehow, I have it in my head that this will be sort of like Papers, Please, but less depressing, despite the fact you’re playing as a grim reaper. A low investment pick-up, to be sure.
Varenje: Full Game DLC – $1.44
I probably should have tried out the free episode first, but for under $2, I’m down to test drive the full game. The art looks fantastic, and even a mediocre hidden object puzzler is usually worth a few hours of entertainment.
The Atomic Breath Pack – $2.00
Three little time-wasters – one focused on destruction, one on parkour, and an arcade shooter. Nothing super exciting, but a cool little package I hadn’t noticed before and grabbed on a whim.
Lost Dimension – $7.49
One part tactical RPG, one part find-the-traitor, this really sounds like it’ll be something I’ll be able to put some serious hours into.
Lobotomy Corporation – $11.74 after $5 coupon.
This one hadn’t quite hit the price I was hoping for – until I took into account the $5 coupon I earned (primarily from buying gifts for others). I’ve been looking forward to this one for awhile, and again, I expect it to be the kind of challenge I soak many hours into.
Re:Legend – $13.29 after coupon on Fanatical
The difference in price cut between Steam and Fanatical was too much to ignore, and even though this one also didn’t QUITE hit my target price, I decided to go for it. I didn’t want to wait another whole year to get a shot at this life sim with a side of Pokemon.
Total Spent – $41.33
& then, my friends came through with a few titles that I was still too … ahem … frugal to pick up myself just yet. I’m super excited for all three!
In the end, I picked up almost everything I planned to, and I have SO MANY very lovely games waiting for me to set aside some time for them. I hope your holidays (and Winter Sale season) treated you as well as they have treated me.
