The 365 Days 2022 Gaming Challenge - achievement unlocked.

[MartyG]

IFO - PC - Day 144 Game 144

A puzzle game that tells you nothing. No clues. Nothing.

So no.

2 I don't care if you're trying to be clever out of 10.

[MartyG]

Farming Simulator 22 - PC - Day 145 Game 145

I came I saw I harvested a field. I got AI to start harvesting it a bit more. I got in my car. I tried to roll the harvester using the bonnet of my car, I made the game AI really confused and they could no longer find the field.

Then I created a crop circle with my pick-up truck to confuse the locals and bring the alien conspiracists to the farm so I could sell them my grain - none came. Then I spotted someone in the path - to the tractor - I could not run said person trespassing on my land over with my tractor, nor combine him in my combine harvester. I was sad and did not have a shotgun to finish the job properly, or a chainsaw.

Finally I tipped my grain into the silo, went to Tesco to pick up my new fertilizing trailer, but couldn't work out how to get it. Then I quit. Great game, would farm again. It did have some frame-pacing issues tho, even running at 1080P.

However, I give this one 8 Massey Fergusons out of 10.

[MartyG]

Sniper Elite 5 - PC - Day 146 Game 146

If you've played a game in this series before, then you know what to expect. It's more of the same with bullet slow-mo x-ray death-em-up shots.

I enjoyed this one more than 4 tho, which I think was a dip in the series after 2 and 3, this has some more open levels, skills to improve, hidden collectibles to find, safes to blow open, and Nazis to snipe in the face. Or in the eye, if you're super accurate with your shots.

Plenty of skill shots to find too, bonuses for long-range kills for example.

Anyway, it's good and it's on game pace and worth a look. I give this one 8 shattered ribs and a pierced lung out of 10.

[MartyG]

Tavern Tycoon - PC - Day 147 Game 147

This is a bit like Hospital Tycoon, but causing liver damage rather than curing it.

The gameplay is very similar too - build rooms, put furniture about the place, hire staff and then fire them when they ask for a 50% pay rise. You've got a staff room, so if you don't like pay, find another job. No, holidays aren't paid.

Despite giving locals jobs, they still couldn't do a good job of cleaning up piles of puke, or scabby toilets, but at least my ale was cold and properly poured.

It's a middling game, not terrible, not great, not offensive, it didn't crash. You can put that on the tag line.

This one gets 5 Sam Malones out of 10.

[MartyG]

TT Isle of Man Ride on the Edge 2 - PC - Day 148 Game 148

I don't know why I keep buying motorcycle games as they are almost always terrible. As motorcycle games go, this one isn't too bad there is a good sensation of speed here and the sound of the wind seems to have some nice effects to it.

This one, although better, still suffers from the same issues of handling being nothing like how a bike behaves and it's frustrating every time.

There are things I do like about this, such as the free roam mode, where you can just ride a bike around a large area of roads, not being confined to a specific circuit. There does seem to be a lack of available motorcycles tho, and for some odd reason, there are no GSXR1000s, no R1. Really, at the TT there are no Gixxers and R1s? Go home, you're drunk. DLC perhaps.

It's better than the Milestone games like MotoGP and (especially) the Ride series, but I just don't understand how bike games lag so massively behind car racing games that have gotten so so good.

This one gets 6 Akrapovic end cans out of 10.

[MartyG]

Battletech - PC - Day 149 Game 149

This one is a turn-based tactical RPG with mechs. Story is pretty guff and it's from the Paradox stable, so no doubt there is a load of really pricey DLC (I didn't look), but the main game is pretty fun.

The way the turns work is pretty weird as it shows "Your Turn" and then you end up only being able to move one character out of your three, so haven't fully worked out how that works. There's also a cone of vision, which wasn't obvious initially that you could set that, but eventually I worked more stuff out and destroyed a load of enemy mechs, which apparently used to be on my side.

Yes, it's mech civil war, based in the 2800s and we're still engaging in warfare on each other, it seems humanity's fate is to keep with death and destruction. Where is John Lennon when you need him.

This one gets 8 Major Adam Steiners out of 10.

[MartyG]

MotoGP 21 - PC - Day 150 Game 150

Why do Milestone keep making such bad motorcycle games and why do I keep buying them?

I don't believe anyone at Milestone has ever ridden a motorcycle, let alone ridden one on a track. Bikes do simply not behave as they do in this game. Anyone would think you're in a Morris Minor with drum brakes. The bikes turn in too slowly and they lose too much corner speed off-throttle. I went and turned engine braking off in the ECU and still it bleeds corner speed just like a MotoGP bike wouldn't.

When you're on the track, you will do most of your braking upright and as you're turning in, you trail off the brakes on a neutral throttle, clip the apex and as you're straightening up, you get on the throttle. It's all about shifting the weight, maximising your tyre contact patch on the tarmac. Riding a bike on a track feels absolutely nothing at all as this game represents it. I don't think I managed to apex a single bend properly in this game at all.

I quickly checked the multiplayer to see if there were any active lobbies, there were 2 games with a total of 3 players. Do not buy this game for multiplayer. If you ride motorcycles, don't buy this game, you'll hate it. If you don't ride motorcycles and can get on with the handling in this game, then maybe. There's plenty of content here to look at that covers the full 2021 season.

Generally, I think people should stop buying Milestone's games and maybe they can give the license to another developer that will do a better job of representing motorcycle racing.

This one gets 4 highsides out of 10.

[briareos_kerensky]

Battletech - PC - Day 149 Game 149

This one is a turn-based tactical RPG with mechs. Story is pretty guff and it's from the Paradox stable, so no doubt there is a load of really pricey DLC (I didn't look), but the main game is pretty fun.

It's from Hare Brained Schemes, the company Jordan Weissman (creator of the BattleTech tabletop) founded a few years ago, and there are only three DLCs packages with plenty of content, plus a good modding community from where to take more. Paradox only publish the game, even after a pretty successful Kickstarter.

Turn order is based on how heavy a 'Mech is (plus a MechWarrior's skills and outside factors): light 'Mechs move first, assault 'Mechs move last; you can postpone your turn to see how enemies behave and adapt your strategy.

It's not set in the 2800s but in the 3020s, but it's not like I'm here to nitpick on BattleTech lore.

[MartyG]

That's the problem with having Paradox's name on it - people are going to assume it's full of additional DLC, because that's how most of Paradox published games are.

I thought it was pretty good anyway, one of the better tactical RPGs I've played recently.

[MartyG]

Umurangi Generations Special Edition - PC - Day 151 Game 151

Utter utter garbage. Hated pretty much everything about it. The way it looked, the music, the background effects that made it sound like my sound capture was on the blink, the way it controlled, the inconsistent physics, the way the game failed to mark the objectives as done even though the photos contained the wanted things in the number required. And why are you using film?

Maybe it's trying to be clever and send a message - if that message is "burn your consoles, games aren't worth playing", well done, you succeeded.

This one gets 1 You're Not Banksy out of 10. Uninstalled and if I owned the discs, I'd be stamping on them right now.

[MartyG]

Floppy Knights - PC - Day 152 Game 152

Sigh, sad face. The idea behind the game and the mechanics are quite interesting and with some adjustments, this could be a great game.

As it stands, the randomness of the card draw coupled with the insane difficulty means that this comes in below average. The main issue is there is a king unit and if this dies, it doesn't matter how many other units are in play, it's game over. That unit can die in two hits, and even the starting maps have 5 or more enemy units with a spawner of more units that keep spawning at a rate faster than you can kill them.

The card draw controls everything, so it may turn out that you simply don't draw enough attack cards to be able to survive the turn.

I think there's potential here, but as it stands, it's not one I can recommend. So this gets 4 I'm not mad, just disappointed out of 10.

[MartyG]

Jurassic World Evolution 2 - PC Day 153 Game 153

This one is a dinosaur-em-up. Progressing from the first game, this takes place in the events after Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. There are dinos loose about the world and your job is to round them up and stick them back in the tiny enclosures that probably peed them off enough in the first place to break out and attack the world. But whatever.

It's the same sort of stuff, build the enclosures and other facilities and ensure that your assets are happy and well-fed. Along the way there will be emergency events you need to deal with and you'll be rewarded with cash if you succeed.

It's definitely an evolution of the first game, looks like there are loads more species to collect this time and there are also some interesting additions to the campaign mode such as the Chaos Theory - this mode allows you to play events from the different films to see if you can make the scenarios go a little differently, after all, hairs and imperfections on the skins makes the water drip a different way.

There's also a sandbox mode and encyclopedia of dinosaurs to look through, all-in-all I'd say this is a decent improvement on the first game which was a little more limited in scope. Definitely worth a look.

I give this one 9 Nature Finds a Ways out of 10.

[MartyG]

Meeple Station - PC - Day 154 Game 154

This is a The Sims-like game set in space.

The idea is to build a station and keep the people on the station happy and supplied with oxygen, food, water and somewhere to take a dump.

It's almost good. The UI is a bit confusing and clearly needs a bit more development to iron out some of the issues, but it's unlikely to be getting any further patches (released a couple of years ago).

A bit disappointing that the Sandbox mode didn't just have everything unlocked with unlimited credits so you could build the space station you fancy (which is what I expected), but it seems to be no different from the campaign mode. Maybe there's a cheat pack out there to fix this, that would be good. And turn off the Meeple voices, that'd be even better.

Overall, I give this one 6 Sandra Bullocks out of 10. Needs more gravity.

[MartyG]

Bee Simulator - PC - Day 155 Game 155

Half a bee, philosophically, must ipso-facto half not be. But can a bee, be said to be, Vis-à-Vis an entity if half a bee is not a bee, due to some ancient injury.

You play a bee, fly around and collect pollen. The end.

Actually, you can sting things and burst balloons too, but that's pretty much the game.

Be kind to bees.

I give this one 6 anaphylactic shocks out of 10.

[MartyG]

Interstellar Space: Genesis - PC - Day 156 Game 156

A 4X game set in space. Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate - as you usually do in this type of game.

At first, it was quite slow going, a lot of clicking the "Next Turn" button, waiting for the empire to expand so that things can be built more quickly and more star systems can be colonized.

I ended up playing it for nearly two hours, so I definitely enjoyed playing it - encountering new aliens and having some diplomacy. Didn't experience a lot of combat, but I was trying to play diplomatically and expansion based over wars.

I think I would recommend taking a look at this if you're into this type of game. It's far simpler to understand than Galactic Civilizations III, management is at a macro rather than micro level, though as you acquire more colonies, there's more to look after.

I give this one 8 Sid Meiers out of 10.