I've been trying out some new games again. Somehow I keep ending up with a bunch of games I have no memory of in my games library. Most of them aren't worth having, even though they were free.
Jotun: Valhalla Edition (35 minutes)
| This game looks really nice. Like a proper cartoon. If I knew what I was doing it might even be playable. The problem is, it has absolutely no interest in telling me what I'm supposed to be doing. I wandered around aimlessly, got killed by things, and just when I thought maybe I was making some progress I'd hit a dead end. Everything is trial and error, with no guidance or direction. |
| I managed to pick up a healing power, but I could only use it twice and had to figure out what it did by using it, so that was one use wasted. I found a thing that I think would have reset it, but it was one use as well so I also wasted that. I killed a monster which allowed me to get to a much bigger monster. Some tentacles started showing up and I think I was missing the thing that would have let me kill them, but I have no idea where to get it. The whole style of gameplay seems to be "bash your head repeatedly against a wall until you find the weak spot, then go back to the start and do everything all over again." |  |
Outcast: Second Contact (30 minutes)
 | Another one that looked surprisingly nice but ended up being really boring. Honestly, it might be a case of the tutorial being terrible and the actual game being OK, but I'm probably not going to give it that chance because by the time I could ever be bothered trying it again I'll have forgotten what I'm doing and have to replay the tutorial. Especially since there's no guarantee that the rest of the game is actually any better. |
Orwell (35 minutes)
| This is a really neat concept. You're gathering data on a suspected criminal, building a profile. The problem is in the execution. The way you gather data is by dragging and dropping "data chunks" and then your handler interprets them. It doesn't sound too bad but can be very frustrating, because you can't just put information together for yourself, you have to wait for it to come up as a "data chunk". Like, I knew that the suspect was in a relationship with her lawyer, but because there was no corresponding data chunk I couldn't communicate that. |  |
 | It's one of those cases where playing it is especially annoying because you can see the potential and it's just not being met. The whole time you're just thinking "if it would let me do this..." or "if they'd done it this way..." It's a great concept. It really is. But it's a bad game. I want to play the game this game is trying to be, but I doubt anyone's making that game. I don't even know if it's possible. |
Sanctum 2 (10 minutes)
| A first-person shooter but you're defending a spot from waves of enemies and between each wave you get to build (or rebuild) your defences. I'm not into the building aspect of it (or defending the target - too much like an escort mission) and so far the FPS aspect is just kind of boring. I got through the first few waves by standing in one spot and shooting. |  |
Closure (10 minutes)
 | A neat puzzle/platformer where the gimmick is that things only exist when you can see them. You've got these little lights you can carry around, drop, or put into various machines to make different parts of the level visible or invisible and you've got to be careful to make sure there's always visible ground to land on and that you don't drop useful objects off the screen by leaving them in the dark. I wasn't in the mood for it right now, but I'll definitely play it again. |
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