 Leave a Comment

Goodbye PaintShop Pro

I’ve have used PaintShop Pro for decades, even before Corel took over from Jasc Software. It has been my companion for everything that required graphical work. Game images, web development, ideas. I learned about filters, layers, selections and various other modern editing techniques through PaintShop Pro.

I’m not really a graphics artist per se, but I could usually get things done in PaintShop Pro.

Why did I choose PaintShop Pro and not Adobe Photoshop? It wasn’t really much of conscious choice. Since I knew I wasn’t going to use it professionally, I just chose whatever was cheaper at the time. That quickly painted me into a corner. I got used to the way its many features had to be used, the hotkeys, and all the subtle differences in general. I knew early on that it would probably be difficult to replace it.

PaintShop Pro did have some features that many other graphics programs couldn’t be bothered to have. It had built-in screen capture, something Affinity Photo 2 and GIMP didn’t find important to have – at least not when I checked them out shortly before writing this blog post.

I also used its batch feature a lot for processing all the game images you see in this blog. And those are just the tip of a mountain of game screenshots I have collected for decades now. Several DVD ROM images have been created to hold all these. I’m not even sure why I always saved them aside. I almost never go back and reminisce over my old gaming days anymore. I guess you could call me a screenshot hoarder.

But PaintShop Pro also made me angry at times. Even though I had bought the program, quitting it sometimes showed a dialog box with an advertisement about upgrading to a newer version. There was a check box in the bottom for not showing this dialog box again. It never worked, and I just knew it was never supposed to. No event had ever been bound to it. That frequently pissed me off.

July 24, 2024July 24, 2024PC Games

 Leave a Comment

POOLS

Developer: Tensori | Released: 2024 | Genre: Adventure, Facile

Not much to say about this one. It’s a genuine walking simulator through underground halls and corridors frequently populated by pools – and a few surprises along the way. It was very pretty and worth it as kind of an interactive art piece – even if it didn’t even last two hours.

With a solid focus on atmosphere, the game is at times unnerving and sometimes even scary, although it’s devoid of jump scares and monsters. It’s just you. Well, almost. Don’t let the simplistic beginning with tiles and swimming pools fool you. It does get much more interesting later.

July 23, 2024July 24, 2024PC Games



Puzzle

Leave a Comment

COCOON

Developer: Geometric Interactive | Released: 2023 | Genre: Puzzle, Third Person

What an amazing game to look at. It may look simple in screenshots, but the way it moved and animated the isometric levels and its layers was so beautiful. If you have sometimes wondered what it would be like to play a demo scene production turned into a game – this is it.

The game was centered around grabbing spheres, placing them in holders for teleporting or using their powers. The orange one could be used to walk on spawning tiles, the green one for materialized elevators, and so forth. Sometimes a sphere could get temporary legs for it to follow you around like a dog. Towards the end of the game you have accumulated up to four spheres.

Although the puzzles are not complicated in a manner that requires real pondering, they are sometimes still convoluted in the way spheres require you to think outside the box. Each sphere has its inherent world that you can teleport to when placed in a specific placeholder, and other spheres can be brought into that world and put in temporary placeholders there.

July 6, 2024July 6, 2024Hardware



Windows 11

Leave a Comment

New Gamer PC + Windows 11

My previous PC from 2015 lasted nine years. Lately it started rebooting randomly whenever it got busy with something. A few days later while enduring multiple restarts, a BIOS error claimed the overclocking didn’t work well anymore. I never overclocked the PC myself, but it’s possible it was setup like this when I bought it. I tried turning a lot of overclocking values down in the BIOS settings, but to no avail.

It kept rebooting to remind me it was time to retire it.

This time I bought my new gamer PC from Føniks Computer, a Danish shop that impressed me by how fast they managed to send it. It arrived the very next day. I selected one of their assembled setups, because as with the previous computer, I didn’t want to put the thing together myself. I just wanted it to work straight out of the cardboard box. This time the computer featured…

Casing: NZXT H5 Flow
CPU: Intel Core i5 14600KF with 120 mm water cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte H610M
GFX card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16 GB
Solid-State Drive: 2TB NVMe SSD
Memory: 32 GB DDR5 RAM

So it’s not the biggest beast in existence, but certainly more than capable of running the exploration games and the web development I usually do. It’s also got Windows 11, which is a first at home – but I was already plenty familiar with that from work.

Windows 11 didn’t even work at first. Its settings app was showing nonsense items, rendering it completely useless. I tried repairing it or Windows 11 using various tips from the internet, but it was FUBAR. So I was forced to completely reinstall Windows 11 from a USB flash drive. Luckily that fixed it.

June 10, 2024July 24, 2024PC Games



3PS

Leave a Comment

Submerged

Developer: Uppercut Games | Released: 2015 | Genre: 3PS, Adventure

Ever wondered what it would be like if you made a game out of just the climbing part of e.g. Tomb Raider or Uncharted? No combat, no complicated quests, no real danger – just climbing on the walls of buildings?

Submerged is pretty much exactly that.

Well, and a bit of traversing a partly submerged city in a boat, just to get from one building to the next. The story is very thin – barely an excuse to go climbing. The young girl in your control has a younger brother that has been injured, and she has to climb those buildings to get food, water, bandages, etc. There are ten larger buildings to find, all with a chest on top with the things she needs.

The game is very easy mode. You can’t fall down from anything and die. Sometimes the girl loses her grip in one hand and dangles for a few seconds with just the other hand, but it’s all show with no consequences. It makes for a very relaxing experience that also involves finding landmarks and collections, but as you might imagine, the easy mode climbing does feel like it’s too much of a good thing.

June 8, 2024July 24, 2024PC Games



Adventure Games

Leave a Comment

STASIS: BONE TOTEM

Developer: The Brotherhood | Released: 2023 | Genre: Adventure, Point & Click

I loved the original STASIS from 2015. The free expansion CAYNE from 2017 was okay, but not amazing. But it still entertained me and in the end it felt like a decent DLC. So when I learned that The Brotherhood had released a sequel to the first game, I was quite excited. It had received overwhelmingly positive reviews from most users on Steam. I was sure to be pleased with this one.

But not at first. There were problems. In fact, there were a lot of problems.

A lot of features from the previous games were there. It was an isometric point-and-click adventure game taking placed in dilapidated surroundings, sometimes with macabre human corpses to be found. Again, the abundance of PDA and their immense walls of text were there too, but that was also a problem with the other two games. Each PDA found had many tabs and the entries were not always that interesting.

Taking a cue from games such as e.g. Trine and Day of the Tentacle, there were two and very soon three characters to switch between at any point. It didn’t take long before they were separated for the majority of the game, but the quantum inventory still made it possible to share everything they found. At first I was happy to see a lot of banter and comments across the characters. It spiced up the game and the voice acting was terrific. For some reason, they could see what their companions could see.

May 20, 2024July 24, 2024PC Games



Adventure Games

Leave a Comment

Return to Monkey Island

Developer: Terrible Toybox | Released: 2022 | Genre: Adventure, Point & Click

Ron Gilbert, the creator of the two first Monkey Island adventure games, was back with his own take on a continuation of the bizarre ending of the second game. I had played the original games in the 90’s and then the two sequels in 2000 and 2001. So it was a Return to Monkey Island after more than 20 years.

At first, the game felt a little light on puzzles and the dialog didn’t seem quite up to par in the beginning, but it felt like both the puzzles and the dialog got better as the game went on. Or maybe I just warmed up to it. After the full five parts of the game, I must say that the story ideas and the dialog is right up there with the original games. Lots of twists and many chuckles to be had. Ron Gilbert certainly still got it.

I had my worries about the stylized 2D graphics and even didn’t like them in the images I saw in reviews before playing the game. But when I actually played the game, I immediately accepted it. There’s something to be said about how the animation worked together with the art style. That being said, it’s very much an acquired taste. All I’m saying is you should see it move before you decide.

May 17, 2024July 24, 2024PC Games



3PS

Leave a Comment

Lifeless Moon

Developer: Stage 2 Studios | Released: 2023 | Genre: 3PS, Adventure

This was a spiritual sequel to Lifeless Planet which I completed in 2015. This one also had me in control of an astronaut on long treks across rocky landscapes, forests, caverns, an empty city and many other bizarre locations. It didn’t impress me all that much in the beginning. It felt a little cheap with its low resolution textures, especially just coming from Stray which looked amazing.

But the game turned out to be surprisingly varied, frequently coming up with unexpected vistas and set pieces. It even had the jet pack from the previous game for a stretch, although thankfully without having to refill it all the time. I also didn’t have to replenish my oxygen. Removing these two mechanics was a good choice in my opinion. It kept a better focus on exploration and solving puzzles.

May 12, 2024PC Games



3PS

1 Comment

Stray

Developer: BlueTwelve Studio | Released: 2022 | Genre: Adventure, Third Person

Know that feeling when you think a game is going to be in a certain way, then when you finally play it, it turns out to be significantly different? Stray was like that for me. I had the impression it would be sort of a cat version of a walking simulator, barely figuring out how to traverse a city, with lots of platforming and jumping through difficult to find openings. And that would be just about it.

But it was much more than that.

The game was also an adventure game with chain-like quests, it had a floating robot called B-12 to translate text and communicate with robots, there were genuine stealth sequences, running for a while from chasing enemies, even some combat. Yes, the actual shooting kind. At the same time, the game constantly awed me by how fantastic it looked. The lighting and the amount of detail was staggering.

So many of my screenshots taken of the game could be framed and put up on the wall.

April 21, 2024April 21, 2024PC Games

 Leave a Comment

A Short Hike

Developer: adamgryu | Released: 2019 | Genre: Adventure, Exploration

This was a charming little exploration game on an island with steep cliffs. As the blue bird Claire, I could run around, get simple quests from other people, collect coins for buying golden feathers, and float – no flying upwards! That would be cheating. Golden feathers had to be collected to be able to climb steeper cliffs. The goal was to climb to the top and receive a phone call there.

The game sported a pixelated retro look, but it was possible to change the size of the pixels. I made them as small as possible, making for a sharper look. The excellent music added to the already quite charming atmosphere. I also played with a gamepad – a lot better than using the keyboard.

It didn’t even take me two hours to get through it. However, I saw in screenshots on the internet there were locations I never found, and I also never watered the sprouts. So it does have some replayability.