The 365 Days 2022 Gaming Challenge - achievement unlocked.

[MartyG]

Radiis - PC - Day 172 Game 172

Must have gotten side-tracked as I played this earlier and forgot to update the thread.

This one is quite an interesting strategy game that involves building things on hexes, and that's basically the concept of the game.

However, there is actually a strategy to this strategy game. Height gives an attack advantage, different types of buildings have different reach, defense, and attack powers, and where you place your buildings is critically important. As the town grows, the more income you have to build more buildings. The more buildings you have, the more of the map you can cover, but you can only place a building on a hex once your reach has turned the hex over 50% your colour.

All the time your opponent will be trying to do the same thing - oddly no multiplayer, but you have a campaign, skirmish, and custom map mode.

Worth a look I think, I give this one 8 Tower of Babels out of 10.

[MartyG]

Realms of Magic - PC - Day 173 Game 173

This is a crafting / mining game, very similar in look to the game Terraria. This one, however, doesn't have thousands and thousands of enemy creatures interrupting the crafting part. It swings more towards the RPG, with more questing than battling.

The UI is a little bit quirky, and you need to remember a lot of shortcuts to bring up the various panels. There are icons at the top left also, but these are tiny, so remembering the shortcuts will be a better experience.

The crafting system seems quite extensive too, with skills to build up to let you craft better and better things - what I couldn't work out tho, was how to get the pine panels. I assumed you could cut down trees, but alas I had no axe. In order to craft an axe, I needed wooden sticks and tin ore. But I couldn't cut down trees to get the pine wood. Eventually, I found someone selling them and traded for some, crafted an axe and .... I still couldn't chop down a tree. Going to have to go and read up on how to do this I think.

Anyway, I did quite enjoy it, more so than Terraria, mostly because I wasn't having to get involved in random fights.

I give this one 8 Mojang Studios out of 10.

[MartyG]

ReFactory - PC - Day 174 Game 174

This is an assembly/production line factory game very much like Factorio but not quite as complex.

It's the same sort of thing as the famous game (which I've sunk over 150 hours into), mine resources, smelt these into more useable stuff, and then combine these raw materials into more sophisticated products and then combine those into even more wonderful things.

If you like conveyor belts, this game will be for you.

I give ReFactory 8 schematics out of 10.

[MartyG]

MicroTown - PC - Day 175 Game 175

This is a mini city builder game, it's early access (and has been since Aug 2019) but it is still in active development (last updated June 11th).

You know how these go, you mine resources, refine the raw products, build houses, shops, schools, and town halls and make your towns flourish.

What I did like about this title was the UI/UX - this has been thought about well and things work as you'd expect them to. Things have tooltips text, menu, and dialogs that disappear when you right-click away - you won't get confused by weird key combos or awkward mouse clicks.

What's not so good is the limited tech trees and some buildings have functionality that is also squeezed - you can't for example, store more than one resource type in a warehouse.

I don't think it'll take too long to get the tech to build the monument to win the game - but there's also a sandbox mode. There's not much in the way of threats to progress either (I was expecting the wolves to attack and they didn't). If you just want a chill city builder tho, this might be worth a look whilst it's on sale.

Overall though, it doesn't score that highly due to its current limited scope - so I give this one 6 bricks and mortar out of 10.

[MartyG]

Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager - PC - Day 176 Game 176

This is a dungeon manager/strategy game. You are the master of a dungeon, employed by the company to guard the treasures against adventurers which the marketing department is trying to encourage to visit you.

The action is split into weeks where you'll get the choice of which event to participate in, these can be things like plundering, training, merchants, events, and various other things, but eventually you get to the point where you need to fight dungeoneers.

Defense breaks down across five rounds (different rooms in the dungeon) where you'll battle three foes - you can set up traps, combat, spell casting, and the final room where you control the dungeon master. You must kill all of the adventurers before they can claim the treasure.

The different units have different powers and areas of attack, along with stats strengths and weaknesses - the idea is to match your defender's strengths against the interlopers' weaknesses. If your heroes die, they'll lose morale, so you also have to look after your staff and keep them happy.

Overall, for the current asking price of £6, I think this is an absolute bargain - it looks like as you progress and you expand the abilities of your army, the scope for different strategies will really open up.

This one gets 9 circular saws out of 10.

[MartyG]

MXGP 2021 - PS5 - Day 177 Game 177

This is a motocross motocycle game. Unfortunately, it's from Milestone and all their games are usually awful (they are also responsible for the Ride and current MotoGP games).

MXGP is probably the better of the bike games they do, but that means they're grabbing onto average.

At first, I tried this on the streaming and that just added to the problems the game has. I think PlayStation must have the worst of the streaming services currently available, trying to control this game streamed was awful. I gave up on that 20 minutes and switched to downloading it and playing the local game instead - it was a marked difference.

There are a couple of things I liked, well one thing really, and that was the deformations of the dirt tracks (although we've seen this in Motorstorm years ago). The music was obnoxious though, didn't like the UI, and I'm not sure the racing was that great.

Overall I give this one 5 flat tyres out of 10.

[MartyG]

Amazing Cultivation Simulator - PC Day 178 Game 178

This is probably amazing. Probably.

ACS is the Chinese version of RimWorld, but the idea here is to command a cult and cultivate your followers into demi-gods so they can ascend to heaven, or where ever it is they end up.

At first it's all very confusing and unfamiliar. It took me a while to workout how to produce the pickaxes needed to mine ore, and turn the chopped down wood into useable timber to build things. After this clicked, more things started to open up enabling me to build a bedroom with beds so that people could actually sleep on something that wasn't the floor.

Also for some reason game sound didn't record, not that there was much more than some wind sound fx, so not much to miss.

I give this one 9 feng shui out of 10.

(If you want to know lots more about this game, I highly recommend watching this review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJxM3POU92w)

[MartyG]

Kenshi - PC - Day 179 Day 179

If you enjoy cutting yourself or sticking fingers down your throat to make yourself puke, or perhaps banging nails thru sensitive parts of your body, then yes this game is for you.

If you like having fun or interacting with a game world, this game is not for you.

The Kenshi experience, make a character that looks like a cross between a transporter malfunction in Star Trek and 2,000 years of inbreeding, get placed in a desert with the odd copy/paste tree. Come across a pub in the middle of nowhere, get hit and die. Try and build a house, unable to place house as no space or too close to town. Find a space. Confirm build. You have no building materials. You can't find building materials as there is nothing to interact with on the map. Die again.

Go to the menus and change the texture quality. Game crashes. Restart game. Game crashes.

This one gets 1 I'd rather drink cat poo milkshakes out of 10.

[MartyG]

Overcrowd: A Commute 'Em Up - PC - Day 180 Game 180

This is a Tycoon game where you are creating and running an underground/overground (wombling free) train station. Striking is optional.

This is an indy game, done with a one-man/one-woman team, and as such, it's hella clunky. It took a while to get started with the game as it had some scaling issues on a 4K screen.

The UI isn't great, but eventually, it got a bit easier once you've figured out the quirks, but the tutorial wasn't a lot of help, not really explaining the strange way you have to put down the platforms and station area.

After you've cleared the tutorial you get to run the station proper, earning bonds and cash - bonds get you new facilities and cash lets you build those facilities - eventually, you'll hit the goals of moving a certain number of commuters and you win. Then start all over on the next map.

I can't really recommend the game, not sure whether it's being actively developed, but for trying, this one gets 5 trade union disputes out of 10.

[MartyG]

Hitman 3 - PC - Day 181 Game 181

So kind of a cheat as I have played some of this on Xbox One, but it's the same Hitman you know and love. Really do like how it plays on PC though, seemed a lot better framerate-wise and looks fabulous with full raytracing on.

In the end, I killed my targets by throwing kitchen knives into their faces, but there are so many ways to complete each of the levels that there are loads of reasons to keep coming back and trying again and again, and that's why I like the Hitman games.

If you have Hitman 1 and Hitman 2, you can also play these and their DLCs in the new Hitman 3 engine too, if you don't you can buy the Hitman pack which gives you access - and I definitely recommend doing that if you haven't played them as there are some great sandboxes across all the titles in the series.

This also supports VR on PC, not tried it yet, but will do at some point.

I can happily give Hitman 3 ... 9 The butler, in the library, with a candlestick out of 10.

[MartyG]

Luna's Fishing Garden - PC - Day 182 Game 182

This is an adventure game where you do fishing and plant trees and other things to collect their fruit in order to sell stuff to a massive dog to get more stuff to grow and sell. The big dog is in fact, Luna and not the character you play (her name is Cassie).

In order to progress you'll need to talk to other characters and do tasks for them, which involve collecting the different types of fish and fauna. So the game is really just a collection loop.

With its 16-bit retro graphics, this one is a fairly easy and quite relaxing game to play and kept me entertained for 90 minutes. I'm entirely sure there's enough here to keep you coming back for more than a few hours though, but it's pleasant enough.

I give this one 7 guppies and trout out of 10.

[MartyG]

Hot Wheels Unleashed - PS5 - Day 183 Game 183

Yes, halfway there and looking at this arcade racer from Milestone (yes, the same dev studio that does a really bad job at motorcycle games).

Hot Wheels Unleashed is based on the cars and tracks that you bought as a kid (maybe - other brands may be available). You start off with a small collection of cars that have different characteristics with acceleration, braking, handling, and others that I can't remember having just finished playing it 5 minutes ago.

The racing itself is pretty decent, with a drift mechanic that you'll need to get a handle on if you want any chance of winning the boss battles or acing the time trials - this drift mechanic feeds into the car boost which you will also need to master in order to ace the game. All this stuff is great.

What isn't great is that this game is filled with microtransactions, FOMO, season passes, cosmetics, DLCs, and all the other guff to try and get you to spend more and more money.

Shame on you Milestone.

If it were not for this, Hot Wheels Unleashed would be getting more than 7 Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine Vans that you cannot get without spending more money out of 10.

[MartyG]

V Rising - PC - Day 184 Game 184

This is a survival crafting game where you are a newly risen vampire.

It's the usual stuff, collect resources to make stuff so you can collect more resources to make more stuff.

There are a few interesting mechanics in this game, such as the day/night cycle - obviously being a vampire, in the daytime you burn. You can still move about but you must stick to the shadows.

You can feed on different creatures to improve your efficiency - the highly the enemy, the higher the quality of the blood.

Eventually, you'll go on blood hunts for bosses and these will give you further abilities (an early one is being able to turn into wolf form, no it doesn't help in the daylight).

It all looks quite pretty, with an occasional frame hitch here and there, but this is still early access, it's one of the more polished EA games tho, so there's no real issue here, there's plenty of content too for the £14 current asking price.

There's PVE and PVP of differing scopes, or you can play on a private instance - loads of options to tweak the game to your own liking (you can turn sun damage completely off if it bothers you).

I think the early game is pretty slow - resource gathering takes ages at first and the base building is a little clunky.

Overall though, this is pretty well put together and definitely one of the better examples of crafting/survival games out there with a nice theme to it. It just needs a few more refinements before its official 1.0.0 release.

I give this one 8 Nosferatus out of 10.

[MartyG]

Capcom Arcade Stadium - PC - Day 185 Game 185

So a collection of games, playing lots of them. Very badly. Although I blame the tools, the XBox controller D-Pad is terrible for these games so it was definitely that that was the problem and not my level of skill. (Aside: it was my level of skill).

I've definitely gotten worse at arcade titles over the years, there was a time I could actually play SF2 on the SNES at the highest difficulty and beat it. Not any more (although maybe if I only had three games I'd have no choice but to improve).

This kept popping up help screens all the time which got annoying and weren't asked for, but the collection overall I thought was pretty good - in the Steam sale you can pick up all the three packs together for £15 and I think for what you're getting that's not a bad price.

You're going to need to like fighters and shmups tho, because you're getting three versions of SF2. Was Hyper Fighting always more difficult than World Warrior? Carrier A Wing, 5 different 194X games, Commando, Ghost & Goblins, Ghouls and Ghosts - and some other titles I've never actually played. I'm not sure what emulation back end is being used for it, but I didn't find there was much of a lag issue (if you frame count fighters maybe you will). There are a few screen options and filters - the interlaced filter is okay, but don't think it's a great substitution for a CRT. It does allow you to rotate to TATE mode, so conceivably you could make this a home arcade box (tho not sure why you'd choose to do that over Attract Mode).

Of all the games I played, I think I enjoyed Final Fight the most, still a fab game today, but there's plenty in the collection to keep Capcom fans happy, all very nicely presented, so they did put in a bit of effort.

I give this one 8 game over insert another credit loser out of 10.

[Golgo]

Congratulations [MENTION=42]MartyG[/MENTION] on getting through six months of this crazy - yet admirable - endeavour! I enjoy dipping in and have picked up some nice tip-offs for the old wishlist.