Category: PC Games

About PC games in general.

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Still Wakes the Deep

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I’m trying something different again as I wasn’t quite satisfied with the game notes format. I’ll try a more relaxed format now, just writing my thoughts about the game. Just like I used to before the balanced reviews.

Developer: The Chinese Room | Released: 2024 | Genre: Adventure, Horror

An adventure game trying to escape an oil rig after a disaster hit it. It was made by the same developer that also made Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

Excellent experience. The lighting, filthy details and the profanic Scottish voice acting from the protagonist and the crew was spot on. Things like a convincing rough sea and water drops sailing down windows made it clear this was a game the developer really cared about. The game was also very dynamic in a way that reminded me of Half-Life. The ceiling crashing down, water rushing in, something grabbing you, etc.

The gameplay was not groundbreaking. Jumping, crawling, answering wall phones, using (a lot of) ladders, running jumps, a few QTE – that sort of stuff. Later there were also stealth sequences, sneaking between cover and throwing objects to lure a monster away.

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Game Notes: NUTS

Developer: Joon, Pol, Muutsch, Char & Torfi | Released: 2021 | Genre: Adventure, First Person

A first person adventure a little bit like Firewatch, placing cameras during the day and watching the footage at night, tracking the movements of squirrels. And yes, the game really use colors like that.

Spoiler: Notes

I didn’t play this for long until it occurred to me that this wasn’t as much a first person adventure game, as it was a “Squirrel Photography Simulator” in essence. I’m rarely all that keen on simulators and so I was close to abandoning the game right there.

But there was something alluring by the game, so I returned and completed it anyway.

Sure, figuring out where to place cameras judging by the direction a squirrel ran on the footage of last night was the prevailing game play, and by itself it could get old fast.

But the later levels really did try to branch it out.

The was a level where I had to film a squirrel at specific intervals within a minute to track its route, then send the interval photos using the fax machine. In another level, my standard cameras were destroyed and I had to place a nut and then follow a squirrel and snapshot it with my handheld camera.

My trip back to the caravan to record footage was frequently interrupted by a phone call of my female overseer. This was the only voice acting. I didn’t have a voice of my own and there were no dialogue trees. The only way I could respond was by sending photos or messages on a fax machine.

Then she would immediately call me up and comment on that.

I giggled a little when I found a squirrel nest with sticks of dynamite. A shame the game didn’t let me light a fuse and run out of there real fast.

The use of colors mostly felt like the developers really wanted to stand out and look different. It was slightly annoying to begin with but I quickly got used to it.

I can certainly understand why some players would hate it.

The end game took place after falling down a rock slide and a squirrel took off with my journal. Since it had the important evidence, I had to track it down. I found another caravan nearby a automobile graveyard with cameras to be conveniently found. The squirrel met up with other squirrels and crossed a river by going out on a branch. I tried the same thing and came crashing down on the shore. The squirrels then led me directly to a stranded ship where they had all their stashes of nuts – and even my journal.

7/10

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Game Notes: Five Free Games

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This is about five free games I’ve played recently, with my hidden personal notes.

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Game Notes: The Outer Worlds

I’ve decided to post one game at a time instead of waiting until I have played five of them, at least for the longer games. But everything else is the same – it’s basically just my hidden personal notes about the game.

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment | Released: 2019 | Genre: RPG, First Person

A sci-fi RPG much akin to the popular RPG games by Bethesda. Lots of planets to visit, with my own space ship and a small crew of companions. Planets were confined – it was not a true open world game.

Spoiler: Notes

I was this close to abandoning the game before getting my own space ship and leaving the first planet. It felt bland and mediocre. I found lots of forum threads on the internet agreeing with that impression.

Also, the planetary areas were surprisingly small and didn’t warrant much exploration.

But when I did get a space ship and landed on Monarch, I had to fight through hordes of difficult monsters trying to reach Stellar Bay, and that’s where the game grabbed me. I did have to lower the difficulty level as it was rough. Later I learned that I wasn’t really supposed to fight my way through that. I should have started a quest elsewhere to skip it, or alternatively have run all the way.

But it didn’t take long until combat was a walk in the park. Especially after being hardened on Monarch. So in this game you really could find some truth in the old adage, “That which doesn’t kill you…”

Tim Cain called this game “Fallout meets Firefly” – I could clearly see the Fallout inspiration, but other than that I felt it owed the rest of the style to BioShock. Especially when using the vending machines.

The colors were all over the place, but instead of making the game distinct and look dazzling, it somehow contributed to the feeling of blandness. Some of the armor looked like it was bought in Toys “R” Us.

There was way too much loot in this game. I couldn’t walk three meters without finding more containers and objects to pick up. And since I’m OCD when it comes to loot, I just had to get it all.

Apart from perks, the game sometimes offered a flaw for an extra perk. I only took two, for more plasma and corrosive damage. All the other flaws were about lowering attributes, and I didn’t want that.

My two favorite companions were Parvati and Nyoka.

I hated how 90% of all women in this game had short hair. You can call me everything from misogynistic to chauvinistic, I don’t care. Beautiful women should never have short hair. Period.

I liked that tapping the hotkey for sprinting kept it on until I released a direction key.

The buff feature was weird. Extra buff items could be placed in slots to be activated together with healing myself. That didn’t make sense to me. Why not activate the buffs by themselves before a fight?

The companion abilities reminded me of the cut scene powers in Final Fantasy VII.

Byzantium, the great capital of Terra 2, somehow reminded me of Dishonored. It was another example of uninspired design in this game. Bland and uninteresting, in spite of the prosperous setting.

I skipped the acting quest for a good reason.

7/10

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Game Notes, Part 2

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This is a blog series about the latest video games I’ve played recently, with my hidden personal notes.

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Game Notes, Part 1

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This is a blog series about the latest video games I’ve played recently, with my hidden personal notes. I decided to stop my balanced reviews, since I couldn’t escape the feeling that almost no one was reading them.

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Blogging about PC Games

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This is my third post in a series about blogging and playing PC games.

My first blog saw the light of day in 2011. I had developed my own crude WordPress theme and had some moderate success blogging mostly about MMORPG. I actually had a few visitors and even some comments to begin with. Then it fizzled out – and half a year later, I finally killed my blog.

Four years later, I had another look at my old blog posts. I thought they were written well enough for me to revive the blog and continue. I spent half a year developing the WordPress theme you see here. I wanted it to not only look good, but also have a lot of features – many of which I don’t even use myself.

But as I relaunched in 2015, I also made a vow to myself. Don’t ever give up on the blog again.

During the years since 2015, the audience for this blog has been so limited that I would probably have killed it several times over, had I not made that vow. And it wasn’t for lack of trying to keep it going. I have written tons of impressions post about PC games, a little bit about Commodore 64 music, and some science stuff too. I also announced some of the blogs posts in various social media.

You would think that kind of persistence would have garnered an audience over time.