The Benevolent Society of Angry Misanthropes: Hwideo Chames

I started with a game I've played before today because some people on a Discord server I'm in were talking about it and I thought it was about time I gave it another shot.

Sleeping Dogs

I've played a bit of this before but, although I enjoyed it, it never quite grabbed me the way the Saints Row games did. But I thought it might be a good time to give it another shot. Step one, of course, was figuring out which DLC to disable, because I have it all and some of it is good to have, some is optional cosmetic stuff, and some of it literally ruins the game by giving you tons of cash, weapons and XP right at the start.

OK, I've just been playing it again and I've remembered why I gave up last time. KB+M controls are terrible (WASD to drive but left-Ctrl to ram?), radio constantly plays the same track every time you get into a particular vehicle, and I swear to fucking god the control to counter an attack just doesn't work half the time. I'm dying constantly because the game refuses to acknowledge that I pressed the button.

I assume there's some trick to it, like maybe some timing aspect that I'm not getting, but the game is absolutely not communicating to me what I'm doing wrong. And in the mission I got up to, I'd win two fights in a row and die in the third only to have to redo the first two fights, over and over and over again.

And even on controller, the controls are awkward. Holding A to run but then having to release it and press it again to jump over obstacles when you could just be pushing forward on the stick to run and pressing A to vault. Worse in combat, where (I'm pretty sure?) if you want to do a charge attack you have to hold A and press B as you get close. Also, every time I switched between driving and walking I'd hold RT, expecting to go forward, and go "oh, right, yeah, it's different for no reason".

Oxenfree

This is one of those games where you have to pick dialogue options but you don't get enough information or context to make any meaningful decisions so you might as well be picking at random. Mostly it's the standard "what you picked isn't what you actually say so you don't know how it's going to come across" variety, but there are also places where your character knows stuff you don't so you're picking blind. Like, someone offers you a cigarette; do you take it? I did, then learned that my character's not a smoker. That would have been useful information to have before I made that decision. Afterward it's too late. And the characters are all obnoxious and I hate them. Well, except Jonas. He seems fine. There's nothing particularly good about him, he's just not a dickhead or an arsehole like everyone else.

Tacoma

I'm so bored by this game. I don't even understand what I'm supposed to be doing here? I seem to just be snooping on people's personal lives via security camera footage while I wait for a computer to copy some files. What is the point of this game? I thought at first that I was some kind of investigator, but then I found the mission brief and nope, I'm literally just here to copy the files and leave. The client even emails you to say not to look at the security footage (presumably because they've already noticed you doing exactly that). And in case you think the people you're snooping on are dead and might want you to get their message out: nope. They've already been rescued. They can tell their own stories. I don't know if the file copy is linked to playtime or to story progression, but it seemed to be happening in real-time so it's possible you could finish this game just by sitting and waiting for the process and then leaving.

Surviving Mars

I think this game is basically Sim City but a Mars colony? Not for me. Too much time spent on fiddly details to create something that's not even real at the end. If I wanted to make something, I'd make something, not pretend to make a thing in a video game. Oddly, I don't mind watching other people play these kinds of games but I have absolutely no interest in actually playing them myself.

Titan Quest

This is an extremely bog standard old-fashioned RPG. With a ton of dialogue and voice acting, and all of it very bad. And it has a thing where you can set which items are highlighted/collectable and for some reason that defaults to "none" so I had to google "titan quest how to pick things up" to figure out how to even, well, pick things up. Weirdly bad design. Boring as fuck.

Starseed Pilgrim

I don't know what this is. It might not even be a game. You get no instructions, no objective, and no indication of what the point is. Press buttons and things happen, but why? No fucking idea.

Space Pirates and Zombies

The pre-game cutscene goes on for fucking ever. So much dialogue. And text in general. This game wants me to learn a lot of stuff before I can even start playing it. You build space ships and use them to mine and fight other miners, I guess? It's some kind of survival games but in space, I guess. Although the reviews say it's an RPG and the game description calls it a space-combat strategy/tactical game. There's a lot here and it makes my brain hurt.