#project365ong — Public Fediverse posts

December 27, 2023 - Day 361 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 389

Game: Strange Brigade

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 28, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 27, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 42m

Strange Brigade is a solo or co-op action-adventure third-person shooter, set in Egypt in the 1930's.

I'd been sitting on Strange Brigade for a while, because I've previously played one of the Zombie Army games by the same developer (Rebellion), and it so thoroughly creeped me out, that I had no desire to go through it again.

But with access to the game via my son's Steam account, and a spare Steam key, and it being the middle of a sunny day, I thought I'd give it a shot.

You play as one of four members of the titular Strange Brigade, a special unit of the British Government tasked with dealing with supernatural entities.

One of the options is Gracie Braithwaite, a brawler, and a red-headed Lancashire lass. One of the things I've learned from my family tree, is that great-grandmother was from Lancashire, and was described by my grandmother as "a Lancashire lass", and it just felt right to choose her.

In terms of the gameplay, while it bears some basic similarities to the Zombie Army Trilogy (because zombies are heavily featured!) and it uses the same Asura engine as ZAT, it styles itself heavily after pulp movies of the 1930's, with an overly chirpy English narrator providing running commentary.

The game is bright and colourful, unlike the spine-chilling environments of ZAT, and I found Strange Brigade a far more enjoyable experience - at least once I remapped the rather wild control scheme.

Nothing like hitting the shift key to run away from a zombie, only to drop a grenade instead.

I had a bunch of fun with Strange Bridgade; it's pretty:

4: Good

#StrangeBrigade #ActionAdventure #ThirdPersonShooter #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 24, 2023 - Day 267 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 287

Game: Dirt 5

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 3, 2020
Installation Date: Sep 9, 2023
Unplayed: 15d
Playtime: 34m

Dirt 5 is an arcade off-road racing game developed by Codemasters.

I don't normally talk about who developed a particular game, but today is a little different.

I've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with racing games. Mainly hate; from 1987 (Test Drive) through until 2019 I tried to like racing games, but I just didn't. Racing with keyboard/mouse is awful, and I couldn't "get" racing with a controller (PS2 / Gran Turismo).

That changed with the Xbox One controller and Forza Horizon 4. It finally clicked for arcade racing. I still don't enjoy technical racing sims.

Dirt Rally & Dirt Rally 2.0 were both an exercise in frustration. I'd heard that Dirt 5 was different, and I had a key for it, so I installed it.

They were correct. Dirt 5 is a whole different exercise in frustration.

As a racing game, it's proficient, and feels a lot like a rally cross between The Crew and Forza Horizon games.

Dirt 5 was released by Codemasters in 2020. Codemasters was purchased by Electronic Arts in 2021. Which explains a lot about why Dirt 5 has been almost impossible to play since 2021.

There is a literal gamebreaking bug, in a game that is less than three years old and remains unfixed. Quite simply, my initial start of this game was a fluke, because after that, it crashed every single time.

It's a known issue. It is unfixed. I put on my technical support hat, and went hunting. It appears that older DRM (Denuvo in this case) does not get on with the e-cores in 12th and 13th gen Intel CPUs.

Gigabyte released a workaround patch for 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs that parks the e-cores to enable compatibility, and I located an app (ParkControl) that will allow me to do the same, and it works consistently.

This is for a game that EA *still* sells.

The Steam forums have multiple posts about it crashing on startup, as do the EA Dirt 5 forums (for Xbox Game Pass PC and Steam).

EA just doesn't appear to care, which is no surprise at all.

Dirt 5 is:

3: OK (for racing)
1: Nope (for EA & DRM)

#Dirt5 #Racing #Rally #Arcade #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 4, 2023 - Day 216 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 235

Game: My Friend Pedro

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 7, 2019
Library Date: Dec 16, 2022
Unplayed: 231d (7m19d)
Playtime: 20m

You're on your own kid, just you and the psychotic banana.

My Friend Pedro is a hyperkinetic shoot-em-up platformer.

You're woken up in a mob basement. unarmed, by a talking, floating... banana; I guess the banana is Pedro.

Pedro instructs you on how to navigate the levels, with walljumping, crouch-rolling, bullet-time, split shooting.

A bit like John Wick, with less coordination, a ridiculous outfit, and a talking banana.

You navigate each level via a series of different obstacles, with the ultimate goal (at least at first?) of killing "Mitch the Butcher", mob boss, restauranteur, and cannibal?

Apparently you're meant to be the meat.

The game is a frenetic ballet of trying to press a whole lot of controller buttons at the right time, and even if you don't checkpoints seem to be plentiful, so it's possible to suck and still make it through the levels on normal mode.

At the end of the level you're given a rating; C, C, B, so far, so I guess I'm improving?

In any case, this year has improved my controller mastery by far.

My Friend Pedro is chaotic:

4: Good

#MyFriendPedro #Platformer #ShootEmUp #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay