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Monday Gaming Diary: It’s been a year of the point-and-click

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All weekend long, I powered through a point-and-click adventure to review for work, Heaven’s Hope. After I finished and logged it in my spreadsheet of games started and finished (yes, I do keep records), I realized that the last three games I’ve finished were all point-and-click adventures: Order of the Thorne: King’s Challenge, Firewatch (yeah this counts), and now Heaven’s Hope. It’s really crazy to think that just a few years ago, this genre was pretty dead and gone. Thanks to Double Fine and Telltale and their successes, they have made quite the comeback.

As much as I love Telltale’s games, if you play enough of them back-to-back, they start to feel the same-ish. Telltale has a fantastic formula that will keep players guessing, as well as laughing and/or crying, but there is only so much of that formula you can take before it all runs together and feels stale. Maybe stale isn’t the right word, but you do want something new.

Heaven's Hope

One thing I can say about all three of these games is that none of them were alike. They were each challenging in their own way, except for Firewatch. I’ll just leave that one out of my thought process here. None of them were like Double Fine’s zaniness either in solving puzzles. Even when I got absolutely stuck, discovering the solution made sense. Also, none of these had an insane amount of backtracking that consistently grew old with each step. Heaven’s Hope helped alleviate this with a fast travel ability. Every point-and-click adventure should contain a fast travel ability. I might not have raged at Broken Age as much in the second act if there was a fast travel option.

I’m glad to see so many options coming to this genre. I loved it a lot when I was far younger, and I love them even more with the inability to get into an unwinnable situation. Not even Telltale has fail states, unless you don’t react quickly enough and you get the main character killed. That’s probably the worst problem with those games; no one enjoys quicktime events, Telltale. No one.

However, I am afraid of oversaturation of the genre as well. I think we’re witnessing this with space sims, and I’d hate to see the point-and-click become overdone as well. At least with the point-and-click, there are a wide variety of stories and ideas one can play with the genre. Space sims are slightly more limiting.

I’m writing up my review of Heaven’s Hope today, but I can say that I recommend it as much if not more than Order of the Thorne: King’s Challenge.

Oh wait, look…The Division showed up for review. Well, it’s been nice knowing all of you. Time to take that MMO plunge!

Monday Gaming Diary: LEGO Marvel’s Avengers Pursuit of Platinum

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LEGO Marvel's Avengers Platinum Trophy

I went on an incredible overdrive over the weekend to get the LEGO Marvel’s Avengers Platinum Trophy complete and get this strategy guide review done. I didn’t have to get the Platinum Trophy to get everything out of the guide that I needed, but it was so easy to get the other trophies before reaching that coveted 100% completion in a LEGO game. That part had to achieved before reviewing the guide, and it happened to be the very last thing I did, as the screenshot above evidences. One trophy is to witness the 100% fountain in the Avengers Tower, which was the second to last trophy I earned.

I brought in Falcon and Quicksilver to the party, because they were my heart and soul for getting all of the Hub worlds completed. Quicksilver was primarily my man for Manhattan, as it’s quite easy to run around the Big Apple with his super speed. Falcon I used in every Hub, as he was my man for flying. He was far smoother to control than any other flying character, and it’s thanks to him (and Quicksilver, really) that I finished any of the races. The vehicle handling is atrocious in the game, and thanks to these two, I was able to complete each race with ease.

Other honorable mentions include

  • Hawkeye, both Kate and Clint, as their weapons made them the veritable jacks-of-all-trades,
  • Jane Foster Thor, because I like her comic,
  • Tigra, because using her scan ability avoids one of the dumbest mini-games in the game,
  • Ultron, for his repair ability because switching him out was easier than Iron Man every damn time, and
  • Vision, for his tunnel grate ability and host of other abilities that made him more efficient to use than others who could use the grates.

Thank you all so much for making LEGO Marvel’s Avengers a better game than LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, even though that one had Deadpool.

Another thing I will say about this game is that getting the Platinum has given me additional courage in getting the other wayward Platinum trophies from the LEGO games. I never did finish LEGO Batman 2 or LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, because the Hub world overwhelmed me too much. But now thanks to this game, I have a method to transversing the Hubs. However, I think I also need a break from LEGO games for a little while. They’re fun, but they do get tedious.

Monday Gaming Diary: Keeping the LEGO Marvel’s Avengers in Focus

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Crystal - LEGO Marvel's Avengers

Last week was insane for my review schedule. Three reviews written and published last week, all while the husband was once again out of town. This weekend, even though I have another game to review, I refused to work on it. Instead, when I did sit down to play a game, I focused upon LEGO Marvel’s Avengers, because seriously, I do have a strategy guide to review, and the best way to review is to nab that 100% completion.

I played way too much last night as a result, and my eyelids are already heavy today, which should make my Monday podcast very entertaining.

But!

I have made some great progress, as in I’ve cleared 3 of the Hub Worlds and completed all of the Free Play mode for the missions. So that’s about 4 Hubs to go, and one is all of Manhattan. I’m saving that one for last because I’m dreading it something fierce. Such a huge Hub World is a big reason why I never got the 100% completion in LEGO Batman 2 or LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. It’s probably not so bad if I tackle it piece by piece, but this shit overwhelms me most of the time. That’s kind of also why I haven’t completed either Dragon Age Inquisition, The Witcher 3, or Xenoblade Chronicles X. I love all three, but day-um they be big.

Today I decided to spend Lunch with LEGO, and perhaps I’ll make that a tradition. Gotta plow through these games somehow, and it’s fun to break up the day with a game for enjoyment instead of work.

And speaking of that, I should get to the PC RTS game I am reviewing for this week. But maybe I’ll clear the Barton’s Farm Hub first…

Monday Gaming Diary: Firewatchin’

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I looked forward to Firewatch, as it was supposed to be one of those unique games with focus upon exploration and solving a mystery. The environments looked beautiful, and I’m always excited to play games that don’t have the traditional gameplay. I mean, it’s a mystery game with exploration; where can I sign up?

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The game is short; my Steam clock says I finished in 4.3 hours. And I was kind of bored three-fourths of that time.

The game is beautiful, I’ll give it that. I had a good time exploring the lay of the land, taking screenshots and photos with the disposable camera the protagonist found, and at moments, I was as tense as my character. But when the big reveal happened, when I learned exactly what this mystery was all about, I said out loud, “That’s it?”

I didn’t like Gone Home either for the same reason, but at least the story in Gone Home made sense and was believable. It was believable that this woman came home to an empty house, not because something horrific happened, but because

  1. She didn’t tell her family when she was coming home;
  2. Her parents made out-of-town plans; and
  3. Her sister decided to run away.

All of those reasons are 100% believable. If I didn’t tell my family I was coming home at a certain day and time, I’d probably come home to an empty house too. I mean, not for the same reasons, but the probability is high that they would be doing other things.

I’m not saying that the mystery in this case isn’t believable, because it is, but none of it makes sense as it why it’s even happening in the first place. Some time, when more time as passed and I feel more comfortable giving spoilers, I’ll go more into this one. For now, all I will say is that I feel like the developer created an emotional introduction for the sake of trying to jerk some tears, but the intro ended up being incredibly irrelevant. In addition, the mystery makes no sense as to why it was even going on. As a friend of mine said this morning, it’s like a novice’s stab at suspense novel. Everything was built up to be so tense and so dramatic, and the end result was, well, boring.

You want a great mystery built upon exploration? Here are some recommendations: Dear Esther, Murdered: Soul Suspect, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Those are great examples; Firewatch is not.

Monday Gaming Diary: Old School Point-and-Click Without the Old School Rage

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This weekend was once again a weekend of game reviews galore, and one was a small indie title that I decided to take on for reasons I still don’t know. Something about the press release grabbed my attention, or maybe it was wanting to throw this one PR company a bone because they’re super nice, I don’t know. But for whatever reason, I said yes to checking out Order of the Thorne: King’s Challenge. It’s an old school point-and-click adventure that goes as far as to include old school graphical presentation, which made me chuckle. It even has a narrator, so it’s a spiritual successor, or one that pays serious homage to, the King’s Quest games. However, there is one major difference here in comparison to King’s Quest: it’s impossible to get to an unwinnable situation. Therefore, the only frustration you will have is in solving the puzzles, not because you have to start over because you didn’t do things EXACTLY in this particular order.

Order of the Thorne

It’s guaranteed!

That was really refreshing to say the least, and it made me venture rather stress-free.

The game was rather short; my Steam app says that I finished it in 4 hours, and there was a lot of wandering around as I tried to figure out who needed this item or where I could use that. That said, the area to explore is very small, so it was expected to be quite short when I realized how limited I was in exploration.

But you know, I don’t want a big, 20-hour-plus adventure right now that will just eat up goads of time in both exploration and puzzle solving. This was a nice sample, and from the end credits, it’s simply the start of a few games in this game universe. If that indeed comes to fruition, then four hours was more than enough for the first episode of Order of the Thorne.

Needless to say, I can’t wait for more. Now to write this review…

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