The 365 Days 2022 Gaming Challenge - achievement unlocked.

[MartyG]

Tiny Combat Arena - PC - Day 199 Game 199

This is a simple flight simulator from the legendary Microprose. It's mostly about air-to-air combat and strike missions. It's still and early access game, so there isn't that much to it currently (and sadly no multiplayer), with quick battle and an example combat arena, where there are ground and air targets across a map with resupplies and a little bit more strategic than the quick battles.

You can set up different scenarios with up to 32 aircraft in the dogfights and there are some other variables with the strike missions. There are limited supplies of ammo and missiles and the flight model is quite simplified, but this is more about the combat than being a totally accurate sim.

The unique selling point is the obvious hark back to the 90s flight sims of the time, and this it does very well (although I did have a few framerate stutters at 4K even on the 3080 Ti). It does work with a HOTAS (and asks you when you first launch), but you'll still need to set up the config for your stick.

Overall though, I give this one 8 talk to me gooses out of 10.

[MartyG]

Ace Combat 7 - PC - Day 200 Game 200

This is a game involving planes, missiles and other shooty things.

Get a rather lengthy cutscene, get a briefing (pay attention to the briefing and select the right special weapon). Earn money and buy a new plane (rather than being provided one by the government for which you're fighting). Go to war. Have another cutscene. Shoot some more stuff with missiles. Then do it again.

Nice looking game, runs very smoothly and is probably a little bit easier than previous Ace Combat games I think (I only died six times on this one across two missions, most of which was me flying into things). Controls fine with a pad but does support HOTAS, though it specifically mentions a particular stick, so not sure if it'd work with my X52.

It's a nicely polished arcade air shooter, so if you like planes, you'll like this.

I give this one 8 You've Lost That Loving Feelings out of 10.

[MartyG]

Stray - PS5 - Day 201 Game 201

You are a cat and do catty things, like scratch furniture. You didn't always do this, of course. No, once you had a happy life on the outside (where people used to bring you roses) and you lived with your other cats, doing catty things. Then you jumped on a pipe and it broke, you slipped and plummetted down into the depths. Your fellow cats shrugged and moved on without a care because that's what cats do.

So you're on your own, doing catty things, like jumping and crawling into small gaps, knocking paint cans off shelves and solving puzzles by picking up plugs from hidden places and placing them into sockets to open up secret passageways. You know, like cats do.

It's a nice looker and it plays pretty well. The puzzles are relatively simple, but I think this is really more about exploring than anything else. It has its cute moments, but most of the time will be spent jumping onto platforms of different heights to get to a new area.

And that's about it really - jump, solve puzzles and do catty things. I don't think it's spectacular, but it's there to play as part of your PlayStation subscriptions if you have extra or premium.

This one gets 8 Sheba Classics out of 10.

[MartyG]

MotoGP 2022 - PC - Day 202 Game 202

Oh happy happy joy joy - a Milestone motorcycle game, why do I do this to myself?

Predictably, I got very frustrated by this game and the way it plays, from the way you were forced to create a rider before you could get to the options and change the volume levels, only to be put thru the same rider creation menu again when you started the career mode. Why why why?

The handling, as it always is, feels like you're riding motorcycles encased in treacle; I still maintain that not a single employee at Milestone has ever ridden a motorcycle on a race track. Bikes do not behave as they do in Milestone games - it's not how they feel like riding on a track, at all. The handling model is so bad, that even the AI cannot apex the corners properly and end up drifting off the track at corners (the bikes just don't slow down right).

There was one thing I did like about the 2022 edition of the game and that was the Nine Season 2009 mode - over 18 different tracks, it put you into the real-world events of the races in that season where certain objectives had to be met in order to unlock the next circuit. It also had a prologue video explaining some of MotoGP's more recent history, a video that was better than the racing in fact.

Anyway, this one gets 4 Rossi is getting too old to race out of 10.

[MartyG]

Cardpocolypse - PC - Day 203 Game 203

This is a deck builder battler by the same developer who brought us Guild of Dungeoneering. The game plays kind of similar to its sibling, but this time you play the role of Jess, a disabled girl who's just started a new school, where everyone is obsessed with playing Power Pets.

In Power Pets you have a champion card, the goal of the game is to take down your opponent's champion card. You do this by playing cards in your deck, which you have to feed food to play. As the rounds progress the amount of food you have to feed your minions increases, so the better cards (or more lower cards) you can play. Each card has an attack and health value, and certain cards have different properties, some will allow you to attack straight away (rather than having to wait for the next turn to play a new card), and some will be defenders who must be attacked first. Some cards are modifiers that will change other cards, and once your champion's health decreases to a certain point it becomes a mega champion which grants additional powers.

And so the battles go one. Around your new school, there are plenty of NPCs to talk to, and some will give you errands that will reward you with more cards - like organising a funeral for their Tamagotchi. There are also boss battles that are a little more difficult, but ultimately you'll be playing many cards.

Overall, this is a pretty well-done card battler and cheap - there's a slight humour to it that will depend on your taste, but at least there are fewer jingles this time around.

I give this one 7 aces of spades out of 10.

[MartyG]

The Quarry - PC - Day 204 Game 204

Well, at least the free demo version that's on Steam at the mo - it's basically the first 40 minutes (ish) of the game and will give you a pretty decent idea of what the game is like. It runs very smoothly on my rig and looks nice (as games from Supermassive tend to do).

You are new camp councillors on the way to a summer camp, but you're lost - ending up in a creepy forest, surrounded by creepy trees and creepy sounds. Meeting creepy cops and ending up at creepy houses and creepy campuses - and ultimately making bad choices.

If Rentaghost taught us anything, it's that you don't go into the cellar.

There is copyrighted music in the game tho, so Twitch decided to mute the audio in a couple of places - not particularly stream-friendly this one, but it was enough to make me think that buying the full game is definitely worthwhile. It's well acted and the story has me wanting to know more about what's going on in this creepy town.

I give this one 8 Mister Claypoles out of 10.

[MartyG]

Caladrius Blaze - PS5 - Day 205 Game 205

A shmup that isn't from Cave. It's pretty decent too - you know how these bullet hell games are, you're reacting to the bullet spreads, moving your hitbox through the gaps whilst trying to hit things with your guns as a secondary objective

There are different characters to choose from with different stories for each one - I think something is lost in translation though because the English is very poor. From characters with Daddy issues to pop stars who want to kill you for your own safety. Yeah.

Your ship has a basic attack, along with three different elemental attacks - I think there is some relation between enemy types and how much damage they do, certain attacks will stop certain enemy bullet colours, sometimes there can be a lot of it on screen and quite hectic, especially on the higher difficulties where everything also moves far faster.

Talking of difficulties, there are difficulties to cater for all skill levels, very easy is very easy, and very hard is very challenging so you'll need to git gud. There are three different story game modes, time attack and a boss challenge (where you just fight all the bosses). Completing a level on any difficulty will unlock it for all difficulties, so if you want to see everything, you could just complete it on very easy first and jump to later levels on higher difficulties.

Overall, this is a very good shmup - deffo one to check out if you like bullet hell games. I give this one 9 ロストイントランスレーション out of 10.

[MartyG]

Loop Hero - PC - Day 206 Game 206

This is a bit of an odd game. It's kind of a tower-defence (ish) deck-building rogue-lite base-building game. The story is silly end-of-the-world stuff that puts you into an endless loop, making you destined to walk in circles for the entirety of the game.

As you wander around the looped pathway, you will encounter enemies - these enemies are fought automatically, your part in this is managing your hero's equipment and the entities that are on the map. When you win a battle, enemies will drop equipment and deck cards. The equipment can be, well, equipped - it'll have different stats and you need to maximise your stats.

The deck cards will allow you to place buildings on the map area and these do various things, such as spawn different enemy types and provide stat boosts, like increased healing for each loop, or speeding up travel on areas of the map adjacent to where you place the building (they have different areas of effect).

At some point, you will loop back to your camp and this will heal you, there's also the opportunity to escape back to the base area, here you can build permanent structures (not completely sure what these provide as it didn't open up much in the first hour) - these can be built by the resources collected in the loop.

From the base, you can go back to the loop, and you're starting from scratch again, building up your loop from level one and collecting more resources.

I think there may be a little more to this game than first meets the eye, on the surface, there doesn't seem to be that much to it, but it looks like things will expand as you open up more of the base. I think there's an interesting game here to find, but the first impressions are a touch weak - so I give this one 7 endless circles out of 10.

[MartyG]

Wordland 3 - PC - Day 207 Game 207

Slowing things right down today with a puzzle game involving words.

You're given a clue and a set of tiles that you can rotate, sometimes there's one word to solve, and sometimes there are two or three - you need to rotate the pieces into such a position that you solve all of the words at once. It sounds quite simple but a few of the puzzles took a little longer to work out than others.

There are 100 puzzles in the set and three levels of difficulty (not sure if that's a total of 300 puzzles or just more tiles for the more challenging difficulties). Some of the clues are a little bit questionable, but generally, it was pleasant enough for the £1.18 asking price.

I give this one 6 dictionary corners out of 10.

[MartyG]

Guilty Gear -Strive- - PC - Day 208 Game 208

Well it's a 2D fighter, the most recent in the Guilty Gear series. Tried this one on my arcade stick over the pad, because Guilty Gear games are some of the most technical I think I've played (and I'm not great at them truth be told as the timings are pretty strict - this isn't Marvel vs Capcom Infinite).

I spent a little bit too long in the story mode, thinking at some point it would transition to a fight, but it never did. It turned out this mode was just an animated story (and a pretty long one by the looks of it), eventually, I did find the single-player mode and had a look at fighting the AI. I blame the beasts instead. I did manage to get thru eight rounds before a bloke with a sword sliced me up and up, don't think I really did that well even tho I did win a few rounds.

Then I went and did the tutorial, which didn't really explain that much, very much the basics - attack, dash and jump. This opens up a challenge mode tho, which teaches you a few more things and showed just how bad my timing was at trying to start juggle combos.

Had a quick look at the online, but there doesn't appear to be very many people using the ranked lobbies. There were a few sparsely populated open lobbies and one lobby that had 31 of 32 players in it. I really expected more people to be playing the game, but alas it seems there are not as many as I expected.

It's a nice-looking game tho, with fab 2D animations on characters, but you have to really learn the GG systems, you will be absolutely destroyed in online games if you don't. There's a lot of canon to this series and a huge amount of glossary included - if you like reading, there's plenty here to keep you busy.

Given the lack of players tho, despite this game being less than a year old, I'm not sure I'd want to pay full price for it.

I give this one 8 frame counters out of 10.

[MartyG]

Bus Simulator 18 - PC - Day 209 Game 209

This is a simulation game where you drive a bus, and have to put up with stupid passengers giving you £20 notes and expecting £18 change. There you go then, have it all in 5 pence pieces. Next time exact change only.

Speed as fast as you can around the route, overtaking all the traffic, stopping at traffic lights (this is why real busses are always late), no stopping for me. You want a ramp, slowing me down? No, you can wait for the next bus.

Mount the pavement because I'd gone the wrong way to get back to the right street - you betcha. If I ran a bus company, I too would have purple hair like my drivers.

I give this one 8 ticket masters out of 10 - would leave people at the roadside again.

[MartyG]

Coromon - PC - Day 210 Game 210

This is PC Pokémon - that is what it is. You collect pokemon from the long grass and fight other pokemon with the pokemon that you have caught.

You will adventure thru long grass to other villages and fight other trainers, sorry, researchers of the evil organisation for whom you work.

You will gain experience, your pokemon will gain levels and evolve into other pokemon and eventually there final form. There are probably shinies too, but I didn't see any. My character did have a nice beard skirt though.

Without resorting to emulation, this is probably the closest you're going to get to pokemon on the PC without Nintendo suing you. It really is that close to the P game.

That said, it plays pretty well as these games go, so I give this one 7 Fennekins out of 10.

[MartyG]

Beyond a Steel Sky - PC - Day 211 Game 211

This is an adventure game from 2020, a sequel to the classic Point & Click adventure Beneath a Steel Sky from 1994.

Things have changed a bit since then, Joey is no longer in charge of Union City and a boy from your village has been captured by a monster beetle for some reason whilst you were fishing.

You follow the beetle and end up at the gates to the city, and that is where your adventure begins. From here it's a matter of talking to NPC and solving the quite linear puzzles by combining things with other things.

It's nice-looking, with a very lovely cell-shaded art style that suits the game well. It's all voice acted and the machines are in control - this is an AI dystopia that you must overcome.

The story seems interesting, but this is strung out due to having to do things in a very specific order to make progress. It's not a massive slog, but sometimes you'll talk to people and not be able to progress without having inspected something prior to that.

Overall the experience is pretty good, one of the better adventure games of this style I've played in a while, so this one gets 8 Australian accents out of 10.

[MartyG]

SimAirport - PC - Day 212 Game 212

This is a tycoon game like Prison Architect, Academia and Another Brick in the Mall, but this time you're building an airport and helping people to get to their destination.

To do this you build stuff and connect it up with connectors. Fuel requires fuel pipes, baggage requires baggage conveyors. You're also going to need a runway, security, ticket desks and people to handle all the unruly passengers.

If you want people to be happy, you're also going to need to provide them with toilets, cafes and arcades. Maybe some plants and the odd bench to sleep on as you wait for cancelled planes to be rescheduled.

This one is actually pretty good, the construction and systems seem to be a little bit more complex than simply building an area and zoning it (although there is some of that involved). I didn't get further than the tutorials, which are pretty comprehensive and cover everything you need to know to get started.

Some of the UI could do with a bit more polish - it's not completely obvious at first how to connect things up, even in the tutorials - but after getting used to how the game presents things it's not so bad.

Overall though, I quite liked this one and it's on sale at the mo for about £8 (usually £20, which is not completely unreasonable).

I give this on 8 massive queues at Manchester Airport out of 10.

[MartyG]

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation - PC - Day 213 Game 213

Mind blown. This is an RTS game where you control spaceships remotely. I did the tutorial and the advanced tutorial before starting the campaign, and the tutorials were a massive information dump, overwhelming so in fact.

From those, it really seemed like you were going to need a cribsheet to even have an inkling of a chance to keep up with what's going on. With so many different unit types and each of these having strengths and weaknesses, and so need to know which unit type to build in order to have the right units to deal with incoming threats.

There are also multiple resource types and orbital weapons/skills to contend with and learn, some of these needing an additional resource.

I'm sure that once you've learnt the systems it doesn't seem so intimidating, but I think I prefer the pace of Age of Empires. That said, once I got into the first couple of campaign levels, there seemed to be more hand-holding than the tutorials had, so go figure. I think the skirmishes could get pretty chaotic, so I might go back and have a look at those.

I had a quick look to see if there was much in the way of multiplayer games happening, but it seems that people aren't really playing it online anymore (there were four players in total online), so not one to buy for online play I think. If flashing lights and lots of different sounds in parallel annoy you though, you might want to skip this - it seems that this game is mostly just used as a benchmark more than anything else.

I give this one 7 command and conquers out of 10, mostly because it is trying to do something more complex than the average RTS - but if you like this type of game, then you probably already have this in your library given it's from 2016.