Hello and welcome, to another edition of whatever the hell this blog is. This week is filled with 29 goddamn games to I think it’s fair to say I won’t have to play anymore games for the rest of the month! I have one more day of steam tickets to survive, but this blog is about the past! I ain’t some living in the future kinda guy, let’s get it on!

Steam

I just want to say, I only needed 33 tickets to get all the DLC for the games I owned. That meant, 33 was my goal, after that I could stop. I now have 45 tickets, I just can’t stop! There’s just so tempting, I can’t help it. At this point I’ll probably end up getting DLC for games I don’t own but could possibly get in a later sale when I have more than 0 munnies to my name. Or if anyone is out there willing to buy me games that’d be cool too!

Defence Grid

Another leftover from the Potato Sack, Defence Grid really rubbed me the wrong way when I played it originally. I guess at the time I was sort of whatever on tower defence games, so I played this for the potato trigger, and uninstalled. Now, however, with the steam ticket, I liked it a lot more. The ticket involved playing five levels in ‘Out Of Bullets’ mode, meaning I couldn’t place gun-based towers. This made the game unsurprisingly a lot harder, and I enjoyed the extra bit of challenge. This still isn’t my favourite game ever or anything, but I’m at least warming up to it despite a rather frosty first impression.

The Polynomial

Before this ticket popped up I didn’t even know The Polynomial had achievements, so at least there’s that. This really isn’t a game, and whenever I play it, I usually set it up as a crazy visualiser as opposed to for its actual space combat type gameplay. Killing an enemy using the sun was easier than I thought it’d be, and this game still looks super crazy!

Trine

Trine is one of those games that I’m ashamed of owning. Not that it’s a bad game, the fact that I own it and still haven’t played it. Thankfully, a wild ticket appeared, giving me ample reason to play! The ticket forced me to play a few hours into the game too, so I managed to at least have some vague impression of this game finally. I’m enjoying the three person mechanics but I’m still not too fond of the platform jumping just yet, I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. I really like it, and I hope that now it’s installed and the fact that I’ve had a taste of the Trine magic will motivate me to finally playing through this game.

Serious Sam HD: First Encounter

I LOVE Serious Sam HD. I have no good reason to, especially due to my usual hatred of First Person Shooters, but Serious Sam is an amazing game that I played a bunch of when it was first released and loved every second of. Unfortunately, the HD re-release fell into the “games I’m buying but won’t install for x number of years” Steam hole that makes up most of my Steam collection. The drowning an enemy ticket was super easy to do, but my Serious skills have really deteriorated over the years. I couldn’t even get past the 4th level, yet I have too much pride not to play on Serious, so... that sucks.

Serious Sam HD: Second Encounter

Everything I said about First Encounter holds true for Serious Sam HD: Second Encounter. So instead of just copy and pasting the previous paragraph here I’ll just make this one short. The ticket here was to get an underwater achievement. Luckily for me there’s one near the beginning of the first level! In fact, it’s exactly at the beginning of the first level. In fact, if you turn around after loading into the first level, there’s a giant pond with a secret rocket launcher at the bottom. It’s like they’re not even trying!

Monday Night Combat

Monday Night Combat seems like a game I’d really enjoy if I just gave it the time. Every time I’ve loaded this game up I’ve enjoyed it, but for some reason I haven’t bothered to play it at any length. The offline survival mode that marries tower defence and the third person shooting is interesting and can get super complicated at the higher difficulties. I haven’t messed around with the game’s proper online modes, mostly because I’d rather be playing with my bestest friends as opposed to randoms on random servers, and setting up a server for Monday Night Combat has proved to be rather difficult to say the least. Regardless we found an empty server and gamed this achievement as fast as we could, so we didn’t attract any actual players to join the server and kick our asses as we goofed around in the centre blowing each other up for tickets.

Beat Hazard

So I totally got this achievement last week, but completely forgot to mention it, so yeah Beat Hazard. I still love the Ultra expansion, and it’s even cooler with my sweet golden ship! Since I last mentioned this game I played a little online with Rufi ‘I just moved flat and won’t tell Psy my new address just to annoy him’ 91. After taking approximately 7 months to sync my 13000+ song collection we had about 200 or so songs that were the same. I assume it just lines up the entire ID3 tag to see if they match. Regardless, that left us with The Police, Lonely Island, System Of A Down, two Wheatus songs and the DJ Hero soundtrack. We have the best taste in music.

And Yet It Moves

Another entry in the “I should really install this game and play it” group, I bought And Yet It Moves during the last Steam sale, probably as some kind of indie bundle knowing me and my affinity for such packs. I feel the world turning mechanics are pretty interesting, and the game uses it for a lot of rather inventive puzzles. The movement mechanics, however, left quite a bit to be desired. I’m not too sure exactly what it is about them that I’m unhappy with but they feel a little bit off. Oh well, pretty much quit the game as soon as the achievement notice popped up. I’ll get back to this one eventually, I promise.

Killing Floor

Much like Defence Grid, Killing Floor went from a ‘whatever’ Potato purchase to being really cool when trying to get this ticket. I’m not too sure why I was so down on Killing Floor before, to be honest, as I had a ton of fun playing it this time round. Object here was to kill a certain zombie with a crossbow, which I managed to do rather easily. If I wasn’t constantly juggling hard drive space (I usually have less than half a gig on a good day) I’d keep this installed and have a ton of fun. But tickets come before fun goddamn it!

Left 4 Dead 2

More zombies! Left 4 Dead 2, and for that matter its predecessor, I feel are the weakest Valve games in recent years. There’s just something about them that I don’t really enjoy, at least to the extent of Team Fortress 2 or Portal 2. Maybe I just don’t like the idea of relying on other people for my progress, and thus, games based entirely on co-op don’t appeal that much to me. The new campaign, however, is pretty great. Some great set pieces and mechanics, I’d say it’s better than some of the main Valve campaigns.

Rush

Rush is a great puzzle game and one of the pleasant surprises of the potato pack. It’s pretty much LEGO Alpha Team except I don’t have to feel ashamed about playing it! Which is to say it’s like ChuChu Rocket with a lot more puzzle elements thrown in for good measure. I really enjoy this game, even if I’m rather stupid and rely a little too heavily on the hint system. Regardless I feel this is a great puzzle game and I’m kinda sad that I’ve already completed all of the puzzles in the game. The new level was good but it just made me hungry for more. I might just re-install LEGO Alpha Team at this point.

Spiral Knights

I’ve been meaning to play this for a while to get that Team Fortress 2 hat, so luckily a ticket showed up here, giving me even more reason to install Spiral Knights. It’s got a nice Link To The Past style gameplay system that I think works rather well in this weird instanced MMO type... thing. After getting enough money between my bestest friends and I we bought a firecracker to get the ticket. Upon which we celebrated by doing the only thing MMO’s are good for, /dancing.

Bit.Trip Runner

Luckily I got this game from the sale on the first day, because it just so happened to contain a ticket! Loading Bit.Trip Runner up prompted me to play through a bit of the 2nd world, and then almost immediately want to throw various objects through my monitor. This game is rather hard, and since I’m a perfectionist, I hate that. One of these days I will S rank this game, but today will not be that day. I got the ticket and split. I did like how Commander Video has been updated with scuba gear on, it’s a nice touch.

Audiosurf

I never play Audiosurf outside of Ninja mode. I can’t handle any more than two colours in my high paced music generated space track. So whenever they feel the need to add new aspects to the game using the other more confusing modes, like they do all the time, I’m usually completely hopeless at it. I got this one by playing I’m A Flirt, which officially my unofficial theme song, on easy Pointman, just chilling in the side lane for that magical red paint. Fun game, and if it wasn’t for Beat Hazard this would still be my favourite game to have fun listen to music.

Counter Strike: Source

I’m not that good at Counter Strike: Source and this has been made painfully clear to me due to my university friends. I have two Lithuanian friends who are good at Counter Strike, like, very good. Like, “The only things I did while I was growing up in Lithuania were play Counter Strike and then play more Counter Strike” good. Said friends then suggest Counter Strike at our irregular LAN parties, and then proceed to completely destroy us all. Luckily, this ticket could be, and was, done using bots. Two sniper kills with a zoomed scope, surely some 8 year old on Call of Duty would have shouted at me for ‘hard scoping’ for that!

Tidalis

In a world filled with match 3 games, Tidalis is a neat puzzle game disguised as another match 3 game. The object of this game is to match 3 (or more) same coloured blocks, but not by swapping them around, but by changing the direction of the arrows on said blocks, to point at blocks of the same colour. I admit I’m pretty terrible at this game, and when I set up a super easy game and left it chaining for about half an hour, not only did I get the steam ticket, but like 34 other achievements too. Whoops!

The Wonderful End Of The World

I’ve got good news for you, if you like Katamari Damacy you’ll probably also enjoy The Wonderful End Of The World, it’s like Katamari Damacy but... it’s on a computer? Ok so this is exactly Katamari Damacy, you walk around a level absorbing objects smaller than you to get bigger, and then absorb bigger items. The game is rather short, 12 levels or so, 14 if you count the hidden levels added during the Portal 2 ARG. I really enjoy this game despite itself, as it’s pretty buggy and only takes about an hour to complete entirely. It also has a lot of that Dejobaan craziness, my personal favourite being a level in which everything you pick up is just 2D sprites.

Intermission

This intermission is brought to you by this Tested Photoshop image I made while trying to code my game.

I was in the middle of writing a line of code when I got this idea; I made the image, uploaded it, and went back to complete said line of code. That’s just how I roll! Anyway, where was I?

Poker Night At The Inventory

While I don’t mind this game, the achievements for Poker Night At The Inventory are pure unadulterated evil. How the hell do they expect me to get a straight flush?! Well the new achievement, and associated ticket, isn’t as gruelling, making you win a hand when you have both a 6 and a 9. Not as bullshit, but still, chance achievements like this are in general bullshit. I know you can’t really do anything else in a goddamn Poker game but at the same time I’m one straight flush away from an S rank and it’s KILLING ME FROM WITHIN.

Turba

You should recall my Audiosurf Beat Hazard comments about them being high up in my music game preferences. Now, notice how I didn’t mention Turba when I said that (also notice how I didn’t mention Rhythm Zone but that’s not the point here). I don’t like this game. I don’t like the art style, I don’t like the presentation, I don’t like the speed of which the menu items move after selecting a game type, I don’t like the effects on screen once you use a special ability, I don’t like the look of the blocks in game, I don’t like the beat detection in the game, I don’t like the score mechanics and I don’t like the requirements for ability upgrades. However, because I hate myself, I have an S rank in this game, and felt obligated to get this new achievement and ticket to maintain that. I got the ticket rather easily using I’m A Flirt, and proceeded to uninstall the game as fast as I could. I dislike this game so much I got the achievement during a Spiral Knights loading screen so it wouldn’t show up as the game I was currently playing.

1... 2... 3... Kick It! (Drop That Beat Like An Ugly Baby)

So this game is also rather crazy, but you can probably tell that from the title. What you can probably also tell is that Kick It is brought to you by the crazy cats at Dejobaan Games. I feel this is the weakest of the Dejobaan games right now, but then again Kick It is still technically pre-release, so who knows what they add before the game is final. Kick It is like a cross between AaAaAA and Audiosurf, which is to say, it’s AaAaAA with music generated levels. It’s alright, but as previously stated for music generation games I’ll go play Beat Hazard or Audiosurf, and for crazy falling down through score plates and getting close to building to get multiplier, I’ll play AaAaAA. I don’t really need this weird middle ground game that does both elements but ends up lacking in both too. I got this ticket by using, what else, I’m A Flirt.

Day of Defeat: Source

Oh boy a Source game! I got Day of Defeat: Source for getting the golden potato back during the Portal 2 ARG, where anyone who got said golden potato was awarded the complete Valve pack, which even included a copy of Portal 2! It’s another Source game so I don’t really have that much of an opinion on it; I loaded a local server and capped a few points, hooray look at me I’ve got this new shiny ticket. Hell it might be the greatest game ever made, but whatever.

Galcon Fusion

I’m just going to admit, I have no idea what I did in Galcon Fusion. I loaded the game, signed up for some forum thing, created a local server, clicked on a bunch of planets and got the steam ticket. I really really have no feelings on this game what so ever. Again, might be the greatest game ever made, who can say.

Worms Reloaded

I am a huge fan of Worms Reloaded. Admittedly yes I did originally pre-order it because of the Team Fortress 2 Soldier hat, but that was only because I wasn’t sure if it could top Armageddon as the best worms game ever. Fortunately, at least in my opinion, it totally does with all of its new modes and especially online play; it’s quite possibly the best worms game to date. The ticket in this game is to deal exactly 31 damage to a worm with 100 health, dropping him down to 69. Another ‘Summer of 69’ achievement, just like the Poker Night ticket. Thankfully this included self damage, so all I had to do was load up a mission and dynamite myself at the right distance to cause 31 points of damage. Easy stuff, but poor Yui got hurt in the process. ;-;

Portal 2

So I really do not enjoy when games have achievements based on other players. I don’t like achievements in multiplayer modes and I don’t like them in co-op. I don’t like achievements by random luck or in a virtual shop. I do not like them in a box I do not like them with a fox. I do not like them here or there I do not like them anywhere! Anyway, I wouldn’t trust my friends to do basic math half the time so relying on them for achievements is the WORST. So when Portal 2 shuffles next to me and says “Hey Psy, this ticket is a co-op challenge!” My first reaction is to scream to the heavens in frustration. But I can’t let a game beat me! I ended up playing co-op with myself, by tricking the game into thinking the 2nd player was my 360 controller. This did mean, however, whenever I used the 360 controller, the portals would flip around for both characters, and then flip back on keyboard input. But again, I can’t let a game beat me! I figured out a solution to beat chamber 6 on the gel co-op levels using only one set of portals, and let the 360 controlled robot just nonchalantly strut through the level once it was completed. Take that videogames!

Altitude

I think I own Altitude because it was part of a steam indie bundle, or maybe it was super cheap one day in which I had some money lying around that for some bizarre reason I didn’t want to spend on alcohol. Regardless, I totally own this game, so that’s a start! This is the only game in which the achievement is multiplayer focused, and I couldn’t cheat the system and get it alone or with friends, which sucked. I completed the tutorial levels, quickly jumped on a server, got the achievement and hastily left with my Steam ticket in tow.

Nimbus

I’ve been really looking forward to play Nimbus, so much so, in fact, that it appears that I totally forgot that I bought it. When it first came out I looked at it and thought to myself I’d really enjoy playing this game, I’ll stick it on my wishlist so that I don’t forget about it. Then every time I went to my wishlist I’d grapple with the idea of buying it finally. Now, at some point in between this action taking place and now, I had actually bought Nimbus, and subsequently ironically completely forgotten about the entire thing. So it was great looking at the tickets and noticing that I had indeed, bought Nimbus already. And I am super glad I did, this game is amazing! I had so much fun with this game getting the ticket I think as soon as this stupid blog is posted I’m going to go back and play some more! It’s a great quick time trail based game, and uses similar air controls to Altitude now that I think about it. All around super fun, and I’m glad I finally installed it.

Toki Tori

Again, for some reason I played games in which there was no ticket based reward for doing so. I was actually going to uninstall Toki Tori from getting its ticket last week, when I noticed I still had 4 achievements locked. So, I figured why not, and got the last remaining achievements for that oh so glorious S rank, and then uninstalled it. Videogames!

Frozen Synapse

I should start off by saying, major thanks to Rolyatkcinmai for gifting me Frozen Synapse after I won his Photoshop competition. This game is absolutely crazy, and I really wish I could get good at this game. But the mechanics seem way too intense for anything I can handle. Every time I start a mission and painstakingly issue my commands, hitting as many enemies as I can, I feel like the greatest person whatever lived. Then I actually press play, however, and all but one of my troops are dead and even he is completely fucked. I’ll keep trying to figure this game out, but I’d also like to pimp this amazing battle in which MattyFTM wins in just 2 seconds.

Persona 3 Portable

In amongst all of this I still played a bunch of Persona 3 Portable, though admittedly my P3P time has just recently been me going into Tartarus and making Ken wear ridiculous clothes for my amusement, while he keeps telling himself that Tartarus doesn’t scare him with a rather scared expression on his face. Oh Ken. He also justifies the stupid clothes by saying “yeah I’ll wear it, I’ll prove to you I’m not a kid!” Well there’s another way he can prove that to me but I’m not far enough in the story to even start his social link, maybe I should just power through to that point as fast as I can.

Speaking of which, I was recently talking to a friend who is currently playing Persona 4 for the first time; and for his first social rank 10 with Yukiko. I came to the conclusion that the next Persona game should be a lot more transparent with the character relations. What I mean by that is, while both 3 and 4 do imply sex at rank 10, I feel they can push that implication a lot more now, and I for one am all for it. If they can push that boundary, they can have good merit to include social rank relationships in the story, and therefore tie them together instead of having what feels like two separate games most of the time. Even if when the main character went back up to their room after getting rank 10 with whoever, and had that person in the main character’s bed sleeping, that would be enough of a further implication to get the ball rolling, so to speak. The games already have this visual novel styled story progression it’s weird they don’t embrace it more.

Also before anyone says that sex isn’t implied in these games, I can come up with two examples of the top of my head, both features Naoto who is the only female character worth caring about in Persona 4. So firstly, if you hang out with her for her Christmas scene, her present is a watch that says how far apart she is from the main character. The scene then fades to black and says “The watch reads: >1m”. The other moment is, if you don’t have her in your party during a dungeon run she might show up in the dungeon with someone else. I think if that other person is also in a relationship with the main character, and you talk to Naoto, this scene will trigger. Here Naoto shyly says she accidently left her socks in the main character’s room, causing the other girl to ask why Naoto was in your room, why she had her socks off or you know; why she’d forget about having her socks off. These small scenes happen with everyone though I can only remember that Naoto scene specifically, because as everyone knows, she’s the only female character worth caring about.

Phew, now that that’s over with, time for the real content!

Planetarian

Planetarian is a visual novel from the fine developer Key, which jerks like me who like anime will probably better know them for Clannad. Planetarian is a very different visual novel to anything I’ve talked about up until now. There are no branches in the story; in fact there are no player choices at all. There isn’t any gameplay or anything of that nature. The only thing you’ll find in Planetarian is a linear story set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But having said that, the story in Planetarian is phenomenal, and completely worth checking out.

In the world of Planetarian, humanity has almost been completely wiped out due to war that used nuclear warfare, which nearly irradiated the entire planet. Due to this, most cities have been reduced to rubble and there is a constant downpour of acid rain. The war continued for many decades after the fact, due to war machines that had been built, that kill any human they detect. The main character is a Junker, a loner in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who goes from ruined city to ruined city in search of undamaged goods to survive and, in the event of cigarettes and alcohol, sell for high prices. On this outing he finds himself in a building occupied by a gynaecoid called Yumemi, Reverie in the translation, who informs the Junker that he is the 2.5 millionth customer to the planetarium. The Junker soon finds out that the planetarium only has power once a year, luckily falling directly on that week, but the projector is broken. The Junker spends the next week learning about Yumemi and how she came to be the only occupant of the planetarium, and tries to fix the projector so that he can see Yumemi’s presentation of which she loves so much.

And that is all I’m going to tell you about the story. I can’t assign homework or anything but please if that synopsis interests you I highly recommend you track down a copy of Planetarian. It is a rather fantastic story and one that I, at the very least, still hold dear every since I first read it two years ago. The story is rather short, clocking in at around 5 hours if you take your time, but the impact is incredibly big. You can even get a free English translation for the game. That website has a bunch of information on the back story, setting and plot of Planetarian if you’re still on the fence about it. So seriously, you should go get it.

So I did the math and there are currently 4 more Steam tickets than there are prizes, and that’s with one day still to go. Admittedly I did said math to try and justify there being a method behind my madness of getting more Steam tickets than I needed, though it does mean Valve has the potential to do something different with unclaimed tickets. This is my hope anyway, as it justifies my rather ridiculous obsession with this kind of thing. The reality will probably be that Valve doesn’t except you to own all the games so they added more in to give people a better chance at getting all the DLC they want. But MY hope is that any unused tickets can be used to buy TF2 keys! I have like a billionty crates Valve, and I want rid of them!