Borderlands 2

Long time no read, fellow game-players.

But : I played a bit but did not find the time to write it down here. And besides, I am actually starting to play games more and more analytic, since after a year of intense catching up I think I am mostly up-to-date.

So I will try to get into that what actually amazes me about games : their mechanics, their rules and most of all, the additional level a game gets when multiplayer comes into play.

I bought Borderlands 2 in a steam sale, and I must say, besides being a dumb FPS, it actually is a very suitable game to study. So I hope I can remember and read all my thoughts and notes while playing it, cause you can see most of the concepts of newer and older (FPS) games coming together here in a funny yet absurd brutal way.

Stay tuned.

Darkout - The tenth million f*cking 2d block crafting game BUT

Yes. But what ?

It is different. Not in its game mechanism. But it has a refreshing 3D non retro game engine,
and it is more like a well made cartoon sci-fi fantasy setting.

It is well made, everything looks nice, even more organic.





The form of the blocks is not closed, the first wood wall looks actually like a real wood wall, with open space in it.

The User-Interface is well made, but I will never understand why they are using small fonts when they *know* most users will have a high resolution.

There is no story, just hey you're stranded on this planet, theres your stuff, get going and good luck, you f*ck.

Thanks to the unusual graphic concept I will stick to it for a bit and explore it.

Six days - Oh my ... Time for Edge of Space

I did not post anything for another six days. Shame on me.

But RL und BF4, to which I fall pray again, are keeping me from exploring the depth of my Steam Library. I put a hold on any new games, cause I really lost the overview on all those in my library.

But Edge of Space keeps updating all the time, so I took a look, and to my surprise, it seems to be a Terraria connected sandbox pixel game. Well, I will have a short look.

Well. This reminds me totally of Signs of Life, only that it is not close to being so pretty and sophisticated as SoL.  It is a Space Setting, the usual, oh my , I was close to saying crap, thinking the genre starts to bore me, but nevertheless, it is not so pretty, the animations are strange.

The dimensions are not Terraria like, rather real size proportions. There are a lot of small details I could now list that would make my distaste perhaps more understandable. I will have a look into it in the future, but right now, that is not really capturing my interest.

Starbound on the other hand, as well as Signs of Life, still tempts me from time to time.

Two people, one pixel epos that actually works - Hero Siege

Well, dear Elias Viglione and Jussi Kukkonen, well, well *coughs* well done.

In Hero Siege you run around and fight as several classes in a (i quote some game mag here) "dark hyrule" in a restricted several screens including scenario and fight against spiders, dead skeletons and the usual fantasy crap.

Sunday Jazz - I need drugs for that game

Jazzpunk from Necrophone Games. Hint : Get some fresh drugs from your favourite dealer and deep dive into a game that has perfected the trash anti-style concept.

You play somehow an agent that steals from e.g. Russians in a cold war setting. The graphics are amazingly simple yet stylish, it's like a bubble gum has melted with a crippled dragon and eat New York, then reduced the whole thing from 3 billion terabyte to 400 mb.





I only played the first mission, cause well I am not using any drugs, but the next time I am drunk I will certainly play this game again, hoping it gets darker while progressing !

Obscure Midnight Test - OMT - Today : Secrets of Rætikon

So. I bought it...sometimes...I do not remember.

The colorful name is "Secrets of Rætikon". Well. When an a and e melt, it is definitely a secret worth looking after ! But fun aside. It opens a DOS console to open the game, even for a steam game this is weird.

 It is an indie game, made by Broken Rules. Nice name. I am not sure I want my software developer to be called this way, but nevertheless, nice name !

That game is actually very nice. It is in artistic 2D. You control a phoenix like bird in an abstract 2D world. It is all well, nice physic and stuff. BUT you have to collect shiny triangles, and there are winds, and I just can not get to the last one in the sky I need to fill something like a triangle container. I tried like 20 minutes now. Nope. I give up. That is bad game design. You can not make the first level like not manageable in my opinion. I tried really everything imo.

Halo : Spartan Assault ... Microsoft...OK. But what is it ?

SPARTANIC MOBILE-APP ACTION ISOMETRIC TRASH

2013 ??? Hello ???

I love that moment when you press PLAY in Steam for a game you got somewhere and then totally and absolutely forgot what it is.

Well. There is some sci-fi style short intro. Lets have a look.

This is a strange 3D Isometric From Above game with no zoom in and no rotation. You play somekind of SciFi Soldier and fight against enemies who look like bananas.

Build-In Irony

The graphic looks like 2005 ?, but I think this game is actually from 2013 ?. The maps are incredibly linear and small. You only have a very small amount of ammunition for your weapons. And the sniper rifle I upgraded to only hits 1 in 3.

Well I am braindead right now, so it's perfect. But Microsoft ? WTF is this ?

Besides one thing that is really ugly is the neon-blue borders around everything. Why people still use these colors in menus ?

Something cool is that you can actually board the enemy ships and drive around with them and kill the then ridicolous easy enemies. And this does not require any skills at all. Hmm. I am really confused from this game.

Fun Fact : You can not access the settings while ingame in a mission. That is new.

So I was playing along cause I am still not sure that this wasnt the real game. There is this "simulator" you are playing, so I am confused. Is this perhaps even a mobile game ported
to PC ? Well nevertheless. It is boring, stupid, badly designed and has nothing at all what would
keep me playing. 

Short Interlude : Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians - Indie Arcade Jump'n'Run

FIRST IMPRESSION

While I still **** my brains out with Terraria, btw. really awesome game if you're into that kind of thing, but, I thought, a coffee morning interlude with Beatbuddy couldn't harm the diversity.

I bought Beatbuddy sometime ago in a Humble Bundle for .... not much. More precisely the Humble Bundle German Edition for 11 €. Now I see Beatbundle alone is, uh, 8.99 € on Steam. OK. All praise to Humble Bundle. Well. Money saved ?! Hurray.

Beatbuddy is made with Unity. Since I am still convinced to use Unity for my Owl Game I am a bit more motivated to look at this game.  How do I know ? Apart from Intel and two other splash screens it shows the Unity splash. And it was a winner of the German Developer Award 2013.

TODO: What exactly is the German Developer Award ?

Hmm.The music in the white start menu sounds like something I can make in a tracker in a few hours. (But when I entered the game, I realized that this choice of music for the main menu actually makes total sense !)

Ah, I love the smell of new Software in the morning. So let's press PLAY.

3 x Far Cry. Far. Far. Far. Cry. Summer Sale, you make my cry. Let's try the Cry of Ubisoft, maybe its Ubihard or Ubiswollen ?

CURRENT RATING (6h)

UPDATE: I played the whole single player campaign.
Actually a lot of fun, but the moral of it is strange.

 Original text

First off all, I am noticing that I am no longer so much into Single Player campaigns. I think after enjoying them too much in other games, I'm just burned out when it comes to SP Campaigns.

I love playing Co-Op campaigns/missions. I noticed that in BF3.

And perhaps the minor fact that I played only CoOp since OFP thus since 2002 in good clans. But I always enjoyed a good SPC in a FPS.

So I was quite happy to see that FC3 had a CoOp Mode. Trying it before playing the SPC, I hoped to spare me the time of stupid AI and foreseeable story lines. Sadly UPLAY and FC3 seem to be buggy.

Wild Wild West - Or how one thing lead to another and now I am trying WWW Shooters ?!

CURRENT RATING

Steam Sale. Nevertheless the steam sale game is a pure brilliant *cliche on* women money on shoes *cliche off*.
unimaginative rip off, I enjoy spending little money on games like

And since the twitch stream of humble bundle yesterday involved a WWW game, I thought ey, I never actually played a WWW FPS !!

And the advantage of a FPS, it can be played with Keyboard/Mouse.

So I bought Call of Juarez Gunslinger.

Despite the name and the fact that I know NOTHING about this game OR the developers, I was curious. Good ol'Ubisoft as publisher and an Engine I never heard of plus a wild wild west setting. OK. Well, first thing was the game needed only 3.8 gb. 3.8gb for a full flechted FPS ? OK ?!?!

Well I write this here being untouched about this game, so lets go. *reloads his colt*

TWOT - From Wizardy Six to Legend of Grimrock

RATING FOR LEGEND OF GRIMORE

Its time for another TWOT entry ! ( TWOT = Total Waste of Time => If you think that playing oldschool games is a waste of time when there actually are modern games you can play that is )

When I was young (Song Title off) I enjoyed titles like Wizardry 6. Even if I understood only half of it. ( I mean I should but for some reasons I finished the titles without any Internet walk through or stuff so hmm. How I did that ? No CLUE)

So recently I bought it in a GOG sale, more for the "Hey I have it again and this time not on floppy disk" factor. But I installed it and got caught in the absolute postmodern mix style of it.

It was like all stuff mixed together, I mean Hobbits, Star Wars Like Monsters, and so on. And the good old "Write Once, Double Reality" idea in a abandoned castle. Me likes !!!!

I even got a decent tool to map the dungeons. I read the manual ! I was ready. Then I made my fist party with a lot of care and got killed by 1 vampire bat and 6 bats. Then I realized : This is hard work. And the graphics were so EGA that even I felt my eyes bleed out. (I grew up with Hercules/CGA so I am USED TO A LOT).

But...the "walk a step turn left walk again one step" caught me.

Seeking for a comprise, I remembered Legend of Grimore and since it had already a layer of dust on it, it was time to open my GOG chest and install it.