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I've been trying to keep up with this project, I really have. And I'm technically not behind if we consider the year starting when I started this, so I don't feel like I can really complain. I'm 4 games behind "current" by my tracking, and have been so consistently for about three months, thanks to a combination of seasonal depression, life stress, and an obsession with phone games and games I've already played to death for years.
But I've been slacking on one thing I said I'd do, and that's chronicling the games that get the better of me, that I give up on. I haven't mentioned a single one, though it's happened several times. So, instead, I'll go down all of the "no, fuck you" in detail here.
HOLY POTATOES! A WEAPON SHOP?!
There wasn't really anything wrong with this one (well, there were several things wrong) but it just failed to keep me interested; I got bored and wandered away. Aside from leaning pretty hard on its funy (as an example, one of the first workers you get is a chesty green-clad potato named "Laura Craft", there is no reason for this, it just exists, because), the game also is basically an unholy fusion of idle clicker and stressful time-management simulator. Things are chill and relaxed until they aren't, but it doesn't really change the stakes any, just makes you confused as to why you should care. So I stopped caring. I may eventually go back. Maybe.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 4: EPISODE I
I tried to install this mid-May, it refused to run, saying it needed the newest version of Java to run. Not the Java Runtime Environment, no, but full-blown Java.
I laughed and promptly uninstalled the game. I'm not gonna put my computer at absurd amounts of risk (Java is notorious for having security holes big enough to shove a StarFox macro-fur's dick through) just for a mediocre Sonic game. Call me when you're Sonic Mania.
ANOTHER METROID 2 REMAKE
This is a real good game but fuck trying to hit a five pixel large vulnerable spot on a large, otherwise invincible enemy. And fuck having to do this some one hundred or so times over the course of the game. Hopefully the titular metroids in Samus Returns won't be so bullcrap.
SONIC & SEGA ALL-STARS RACING TRANSFORMED
This game singlehandedly made me change my opinion about tutorials and handholding in video games. Sometimes, it's important to have any idea at all of what the fuck you're doing. ASRT doesn't tell you fuckall, which is why Steam has no less than three "YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE GAME, HERE'S HOW" guides on its servers. On top of that, I suck at racing games and was expecting this would have as gentle a learning curve as Sonic Riders Zero Gravity.
Needless to say, I was not given such.
LOOT HOUND
I went as far as I could through this until it became obvious that I would need to grind tens of thousands of experience points, 400 or 500 at a time, to get any further. Then I used Cheat Engine to give myself that EXP. Then I realized it didn't really help the game get better.
The problem is, the game presents itself as a goal-oriented casual game; it tells you "your dog(s) can find things, go find things" and then it promptly shrugs and becomes... a dog-walking simulator. The dogs in Loot Hound are incredibly realistic, which is to say that they don't do anything you want them to do, pee constantly, and end up leading YOU around instead of the other way around. It doesn't help that the "loot" starts out in apparently predetermined spots, but that those spots are maddeningly hard to find, especially when your dog wants to bark at a squirrel or pee on a bush or piss off a security guard. Not helping matters either is the fact that levels become vast expanses of flat green or flat white after a while and it becomes incredibly hard to orient yourself.
I know for a fact I played this wrong. I played it as a game to be beaten and it put me in the doghouse. If I just treated it like a dog-walking simulator I would probably not feel ripped off of the buck fifty that chrono.gg asked for it.
But I've been slacking on one thing I said I'd do, and that's chronicling the games that get the better of me, that I give up on. I haven't mentioned a single one, though it's happened several times. So, instead, I'll go down all of the "no, fuck you" in detail here.
HOLY POTATOES! A WEAPON SHOP?!
There wasn't really anything wrong with this one (well, there were several things wrong) but it just failed to keep me interested; I got bored and wandered away. Aside from leaning pretty hard on its funy (as an example, one of the first workers you get is a chesty green-clad potato named "Laura Craft", there is no reason for this, it just exists, because), the game also is basically an unholy fusion of idle clicker and stressful time-management simulator. Things are chill and relaxed until they aren't, but it doesn't really change the stakes any, just makes you confused as to why you should care. So I stopped caring. I may eventually go back. Maybe.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 4: EPISODE I
I tried to install this mid-May, it refused to run, saying it needed the newest version of Java to run. Not the Java Runtime Environment, no, but full-blown Java.
I laughed and promptly uninstalled the game. I'm not gonna put my computer at absurd amounts of risk (Java is notorious for having security holes big enough to shove a StarFox macro-fur's dick through) just for a mediocre Sonic game. Call me when you're Sonic Mania.
ANOTHER METROID 2 REMAKE
This is a real good game but fuck trying to hit a five pixel large vulnerable spot on a large, otherwise invincible enemy. And fuck having to do this some one hundred or so times over the course of the game. Hopefully the titular metroids in Samus Returns won't be so bullcrap.
SONIC & SEGA ALL-STARS RACING TRANSFORMED
This game singlehandedly made me change my opinion about tutorials and handholding in video games. Sometimes, it's important to have any idea at all of what the fuck you're doing. ASRT doesn't tell you fuckall, which is why Steam has no less than three "YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE GAME, HERE'S HOW" guides on its servers. On top of that, I suck at racing games and was expecting this would have as gentle a learning curve as Sonic Riders Zero Gravity.
Needless to say, I was not given such.
LOOT HOUND
I went as far as I could through this until it became obvious that I would need to grind tens of thousands of experience points, 400 or 500 at a time, to get any further. Then I used Cheat Engine to give myself that EXP. Then I realized it didn't really help the game get better.
The problem is, the game presents itself as a goal-oriented casual game; it tells you "your dog(s) can find things, go find things" and then it promptly shrugs and becomes... a dog-walking simulator. The dogs in Loot Hound are incredibly realistic, which is to say that they don't do anything you want them to do, pee constantly, and end up leading YOU around instead of the other way around. It doesn't help that the "loot" starts out in apparently predetermined spots, but that those spots are maddeningly hard to find, especially when your dog wants to bark at a squirrel or pee on a bush or piss off a security guard. Not helping matters either is the fact that levels become vast expanses of flat green or flat white after a while and it becomes incredibly hard to orient yourself.
I know for a fact I played this wrong. I played it as a game to be beaten and it put me in the doghouse. If I just treated it like a dog-walking simulator I would probably not feel ripped off of the buck fifty that chrono.gg asked for it.