And Just Give Up.

This is going to be a bigger, longer and harder update, probably (I haven't written it yet), because the last update was late and the next week would've covered about three days. So instead, this update is covering two weeks of the Steam games I've played. It felt like a lot at the time.

A Game Of Thrones: Genesis

Two weeks ago, I'd just discovered the basics of AGOTG; moving little people around and making them fight and kill each other. Before I moved onto any further campaigns, I wanted to give a large-scale AI game a shot, playing against seven other factions. The game crashed after a few minutes, but during those minutes I was mostly confused about what was going on, trying to manage the various pieces and systems and factions and generally not playing very well. I like to play games that way, with me as just one of many pieces on the ultimate structure of the playing field, which is why I like Mount & Blade a lot and why I never finished my first very large game of Civ V, but I decided it wasn't conducive to my goal of finishing/getting good at the games set out before me.

I played a few missions into the second campaign and decided it was going well and the objectives were fairly easy, so I'd press on as much as I could. The campaigns themselves are probably really interesting to fans of the books and having a dragon is fun, even if the damage done is represented in numbers and meters only. After about three missions, I got to an objective I couldn't figure out, so I got bored and played some more AI games.

I can't remember much specifically about these games, expect the achievements seeming pretty easy and liking the results screens. It feels like they had high hopes for this game, but the community seems to agree that they didn't market it enough to generate a steady player base, starving the game. Eventually I just decided I didn't like the game and that I'd played enough of it, so it was time to move onto something new.

I feel like cutting the blog in two here, but I know the statistics posts are long, so I don't think there's anything wrong with going on. Also, when you're writing it always seems like you've written more than you have. This update is probably just five sentences so far.

A.R.E.S.

I'm choosing to skip A Valley Without Wind because it's a game I like and I know I'll get back to it one day. Instead, I'm moving on to A.R.E.S., I game about a robot who was built without the capacity to love. It's a side-scrolling platformer with shooty robots going pew pew pew pew, something I'm more suited to than medieval fantasy RTSs. The game has elements which make it seem like some Metroidvania things will be involved, like secret collectables which can potentially upgrade your robot's stats hidden behind things you can't get to without certain powers you'll receive in later levels. No problem, I thought, I'll just ignore any especially difficult collectables until I get stuck, then I'll just hit the level select screen.

The platforming can get difficult, with wind to push you back and weirdly imprecise movement controls, at least using a 360 controller. Also, the upgrade system is strange because you essentially have to farm for upgrade points on higher difficulties, which they make easy by having the enemies quickly respawn, but the upgrade points are the same currency used to buy bombs used to access secret areas or get through obstacles and health packs used to heal. This is what makes farming essential; the items you need to get through the levels are expensive enough to offset any profit from getting through the levels. Even then, farming is tedious because occasionally you'll get hit, creating need for another health pack, meaning it takes longer to make enough for an upgrade.

So eventually, I made it to the final boss after a long level of fighting and platforming and I found it too difficult to proceed. So, I thought, this is the time to use my new skills to get some of the previous collectables I missed. It's only then that I discovered that there is no level select screen. Apparently, you have to start a new game plus to get all of those collectables at the beginning. And if I wanted to get back to the boss, I'd have to go through that whole last level again, farming as much as I could. So that's when I stopped playing that game.

AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity

Then I started playing this game some. I've played it a little before, but I've never gotten the hang of it, so I'm looking forward to getting better. I'm not going to try to perfect every level, just to play all of them and finish. Then I can do it all again in the sequel.