#project365ong — Public Fediverse posts

November 10, 2023 - Day 314 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 333

Game: Friends vs Friends

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 30, 2023
Installation Date: Nov 10, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 16m

Friends vs Friends is a combination multiplayer PVP FPS and deckbuilder.

Those two things go together like chocolate ice cream and nachos; I like both of those things, but not in the same bowl.

It's the fourth game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and is reinforcing my theory that some devs are trying use the bundle to juice their player base to try and reach critical mass.

The opening of this game took me by surprise. I do not remember another game that has a fully animated theme song intro.

For a moment I was genuinely wondering whether this was a cartoon of some kind, because it feels just like the opening to a 90's Saturday morning cartoon.

The theme song alerted me to the fact it was a deckbuilder, but not that it was also a FPS, so when I found myself staring at a cel-shaded 3D environment, and while the environmental design and character designs were well done, I was at a loss as to what to do next.

I wandered around hoping that I'd trigger some kind of tutorial, some idea of how to play the game... nothing.

I found a shop, and guns I could try out, but no idea how to obtain them. I couldn't work out how to start a match, and I didn't want to start a match without knowing how to play.

Eventually I gave up, and started a 1v1 quickmatch; I muddled my way through, winning 1 out of 5 matches. I tried a 2v2 match with bots, in which my "team" lost both times.

Turns out, the guns are cards in your deck, you win matches, get cash, use the cash to buy new cards, build a new deck (or upgrade the old one).

After the 2v2 match, I spotted a question mark icon tucked away in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, which on a 3440x1440 screen wasn't exactly obvious, and it contained a set of instructions for how to play the game.

For me there are few issues with the game; the first one is in the title. It's a game that would probably work best with 1 or 3 friends (multiplayer options are 1v1 or 2v2).

With everyone either in the same room in a LAN game, or all on voicechat together, this could be amusing, because some of the card effects were amusing. Playing against randoms? No-one to laugh with.

Some cards were confusing "If I play this, does it affect me or the opponent?" No idea, even after playing it...

...because it's a PVP FPS. The pace of the game means it either feels like nothing is happening, or feels like everything is happening, as I'm trying to shoot, and look at my deck, and not get shot, and pick out a card, and I'm dead.

Unfortunately, Friends vs Friends feels like it had potential, but it all ended up just a bit:

2: Meh

#FriendsVsFriends #PVP #FPS #Deckbuilder #HumbleChoice #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

July 19, 2023 - Day 200 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 220

Game: Roadwarden

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 12, 2022
Library Date: Jul 18, 2023
Unplayed: 1d
Playtime: 23m

The third review for this month's Humble Choice bundle is the fourth game in the bundle, because I wanted something low impact, and Roadwarden looked like it might fit the bill.

Another pixel-art based game, but also a mash-up between an RPG, and adventure game, and interactive fiction?

Roadwarden is set in a fantasy kingdom of some kind, where you find yourself as the newly appointed "roadwarden". Shocking twist, right there.

As far as I can tell, a roadwarden is kind of a jack-of-all-trades who travels between locations in the peninsula, carrying communications, doing odd jobs, killing monsters, and completing the quests the game hands you.

It's all rendered in pixel-art shades of brown, but (thankfully) the pages of text you need to read through a rendered in a clean serif typeface (although you can choose a pixel-font if that suits you).

It hasn't really grabbed me. It was definitely low-impact, but I'm a bit too tired to read through pages and pages of text.

I'll let it sit for a few days, see if it tickles my brain (as some games do), or if I forget about it.

Roadwarden is:

3: OK

#Roadwarden #PixelArt #RPG #TextAdventure #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay #HappyBirthdayDad

July 15, 2023 - Day 196 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 216

Game: Vampyr

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 5, 2018
Library Date: Sep 25, 2022
Unplayed: 293d (9m20d)
Playtime: 27m

Vampyr (or "I don't vant to suck your blood, but I might have to), is an open-world third-person ARPG, set in London during the 1918 Spanish Flu.

Yesterday's "I feel like hot garbage due to lack of sleep" turned out to be "Actually, sick. Again." so a game set during the Spanish flu feels vaguely appropriate.

The setup of the game is interesting, but gameplay turned out to be a little more frustrating than expected. You're a doctor who wakes up in a mass grave to find he's been turned into a vampire.

However, for some reason that I would dig around and find if I was feeling a little less half-dead, any time I turned in game, the experience would make a whip-pan seem positively leisurely in comparison.

More than once while I was trying to escape the men pursuing me, and seeking to kill me... again?... in attempting to turn a corner, I'd find myself having turned so fast I was disoriented, or worse still, running TOWARD my pursuers.

It hasn't really grabbed me at this point; if I'm in the mood for a supernaturally themed ARPG, I'm more likely to load up Ghostwire: Tokyo than Vampyr, or for vampire-on-vampire violence, probably Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt (at least as long as the servers are live).

I'll probably give Vampyr another shot when my hearing isn't going wild, but for now it's:

3: OK

#Vampyr #ThirdPerson #ARPG #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

Mar 26, 2023 - Day 85 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 91

Game: Lost Castle

Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Sep 1, 2016
Library Date: Mar 12, 2018
Unplayed: 1840 days (5y14d)
Playtime: 20m

There are some games, that when I play them for the first time, I'm terribly disappointed to discover something that I have missed in my library that I could have been enjoying all this time.

Lost Castle is not one of those games.

It's a 2.5D "action RPG" with roguelike elements. Apparently the devs looked at the table of roguelike elements, scooped up a bunch, looked at "fun" and went "Nahhhh".

Repetitive mobs, repetitive soundtrack, 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Pity Lost Castle didn't remain lost, because:

1: Nope

#LostCastle #ActionRPG #RogueLike #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365