The 365 Days 2022 Gaming Challenge - achievement unlocked.

[MartyG]

Nuclear Blaze - PC - Day 244 Game 244

This is a puzzle(ish) platformer where you are a fireman who must put out fires in a secret military facility.

Along the way you will gain new techniques and encounter new perils as you go through the map, things getting gradually more tricky. You'll confront fire, purple fire, electricity, firebombs, switches, pumps and values - you must conquer them all and defeat the final boss to win the day.

It's a pretty short experience, one you'll be able to complete in a couple of hours, but it's a good challenge, that does start to ramp up in difficulty towards the end. Fortunately, if you get stuck, you can tune down the difficulty by giving yourself more shields (even immortality if you really like), so you'll be able to see the end of the game regardless of your skill level. I'd play it on the default settings at first though.

A short game, but at £6 it's well priced and worth a look I think. I give Nuclear Blaze 8 radioactive burns out of 10.

[MartyG]

Immortals Fenyx Rising - PC - Day 245 Game 245

It's a 3D platformer adventure game, which was inoffensive. It's from Ubisoft and I joked that I'd be climbing towers, then I ended up climbing a tower, well in this case a statue so that you could find areas of interest to go and explore.

The exploring involves solving some platform puzzles, like pulling levers, placing stones on pressure plates ... the usual stuff. Initially, this adventuring is to gain some equipment, for which you'll end up with a sword, hammer, wings, the ability to levitate things, a magical bow and Thor's lightning.

It looks pleasant enough, although there does seem to be quite a lot of fog in the game to hide draw distances, even set on 4K ultra settings. The story plods along and breaks the fourth wall, again it's pleasant enough.

And that's what Fenyx Rising seems to be all about, competent enough but a somewhat generic platformer that doesn't really do anything new.

This one gets 7 God Powers out of 10.

[MartyG]

Dinosaur Fossil Hunter - PC - Day 246 Game 246

Playing this game is like drinking bleach. It gets 1 Alan Grants out of 10.

[MartyG]

Deliver Us The Moon - PS5 - Day 247 Game 247

It's an exploration puzzle game where you go to the moon (I think I might have played this on Xbox before, I started to recognise some things like collecting oxygen, but it can't have been memorable that time either).

I've some concerns that such an important operation to provide power to the Earth was so badly managed and handled, with systems that are overly complicated and badly automated, requiring you to turn dozens and dozens of switches, rather than controlling it via Alexa.

This is alright, but I found it a bit meh tbh, the puzzles aren't particularly difficult, they're just a bit drawn out and if you die, such as by running out of oxygen because of course when you plan a mission to the moon you only take 3 minutes worth of it with you, or by touching electricity because you design a system that has deadly fail state, the puzzles are reset completely to the beginning again even if you are one step away from solving it.

The movement in zero gravity is a bit tedious after a while too, constantly having to rotate yourself. Also, the moon didn't turn out to be be a mega-structure built by ancient aliens that seeded the Earth as I had been lead to believe.

This one gets 5 Sandra Bullocks out of 10.

[MartyG]

Firefighting Simulator - The Squad - PC - Day 248 Game 248

This, as the name would strongly suggest, is a firefighting simulator. You are the chief of a fire engine and in charge of three other firefighters.

You select a mission from the map, race your fire engine to the scene with blues and twos, grab your fire axe, smash the windows, rescue people trapped inside the building and spray water out your large but capable hose.

This is actually quite enjoyable, it's not a difficult challenge though and it's all a bit samey. I was hoping there'd be a few traffic accidents where you'd need to amputate limbs to rescue people, but it was not to be. You just put out fires mostly. I did enjoy racing the engines with flashing lights though, and jumping red lights.

Overall, it's not a bad effort, just quite basic. Powerwash Simulator is a far better game if you like spraying things with water, and at £21 the asking price is a little steep for what you're getting.

I give this one 6 Desolation of Smaugs out of 10.

[MartyG]

Train Sim World 3 - PC - Day 249 Game 249

How Dovetail? How? How was it possible to make TSW3 worse than TSW2? Even the scenarios are worse.

TSW2 was actually pretty decent. Sure it had a lot of DLC. A LOT of DLC, but at least the base game had interesting scenarios.

I played one scenario towards the end where I had to refuel a train, but I couldn't use the fuel cap nearest to the pump. Oh no. I had to use one on the other side of the train, and hose pipes can't go through the metal for some reason and aren't long enough to go the length of the trail to actually reach it, regardless of where you stop the train. You also can't walk down steps or jump.

You'll get stuck on invisible walls, and other scenario items you can walk right thru. The Pendolino will stop working (possible that was my error, not sure), but it wouldn't raise again. It's half-baked, but you can still buy DLC, because of course you can.

This gets 1 derailment out of 10. Just no.

[MartyG]

Capcom Fighting Collection - PC - Day 250 Game 250

Playing this on an XBox One pad which wasn't optimal, but it's actually not a bad collection for the asking price. Yes, you can always emulate them all (and more) with MAME, but it's nice having them in a collection all laid out for you.

What I did think was disappointing is there was no info included about the different games, no year of release, character info etc. All the move lists are there, and there is a museum where you can look at artwork or listen to the music from the different titles, it just seems like an incomplete experience without the database of things.

The games seem to span a good range, but as such, some of the titles, like Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, feel old to play. Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire and Vampire Hunter 2: Darkstalkers’ Revenge feels more modern, playing more like MvC2.

Overall, if you're a 2D fighter fan, it's not bad for the asking price. The scanline filter looked bloody awful on my OLED though (but for some reason looked absolutely fine on stream).

So this one gets 8 Knee Bazookas out of 10.

[MartyG]

Airport CEO - PC - Day 251 Game 251

This is a tycoon game where you build and run an airport.

I played another airport sim game a couple of weeks ago and that was relatively simple. This one is waaaaaaay more complicated and as such is a bit overwhelming at first.

There's not a lot of help to tell you how to do things to make the airport work, so a lot of time is going to be spent clicking on the many many many buttons trying to find something you need to build.

When you get past this, it's not a bad game and there's definitely some thought gone into the different systems in the game, it simply has a very steep learning curve to work out how to play it.

So this just about gets a recommendation if you like tycoon games, but only barely. This gets 6 RAF Witterings out of 10.

[MartyG]

LEGO The Lord of the Rings - PC - Game 252 Game 252

This is an oldie, from 2012 and it definitely feels it. It's more of an RPGlite game this time around where you pretty much follow the LOTR movie order, doing quests and running away from RingWraiths.

As you go along you unlock characters from the story, and each of these have different powers allowing you to progress through the levels - it's the same LEGO game formula, so if you've seen one of these games before, then you've seen this one too. It takes quite a lot of music and dialogue from the movie, so no doubt this one will get content ID matched.

I'm not the biggest LEGO game fan tbh, and I seems to have collected most of them in my Steam library, so I'll probably try and get through a few of them.

Given it forges in the movie well into the game, I give this one 6 gollums out of 10.

[MartyG]

Ship Graveyard Simulator - PC - Day 253 Game 253

Apparently, I thought this was day 252 again, but no, it was 253. I lose count sometimes.

This is another simulator game where you smash stuff with hammers and cut things with saws. That's pretty much it really, smashing things gets you scraps of material which you can sell and you can get a workshop and make alloys and probably do stuff with that, but by the time you get to that point you'll probably reach the graveyard stage, that would be the stage of dying from boredom.

There are way better sim games than this, I'd play Powerwash Simulator or House Flipper or Train Station Renovation instead, not this.

It didn't crash though, which is good, so this one gets 4 you're going to need a tetanus jab out of 10.

[MartyG]

Omno - PC - Day 254 Game 254

This is an adventure game with some platforming elements to it. There are no audio options on this one, so you're forced to listen to the soundtrack at full volume. It wasn't too much of an annoyance as the music was pleasant, but please devs, give us the option here, it's not difficult to have a volume level mixer in a game - this is a solved problem.

You're placed straight into the "action", of collecting energy balls, there's no tutorial so you're on your own to fathom how things work. Eventually, you'll get the rush power, and this allows you to jump-dash to get you across longer gaps in platforms. There are also some moving platform puzzles which you then use your dash on.

You'll also meet various plants and animals that have a journal entry to tell you about them, these make up the story along with the diaries of another adventurer who went on this trek before you.

It's a pleasant game with a nice art style, but eventually, I got stuck on a puzzle and so my progress through the game was halted - I turned it off.

This one gets 7 maroolas out of 10.

[MartyG]

Crown Trick - PC - Day 255 Game 255

The is a rogue-like where you play Elle, a girl with no arms - but since when did a disability stop you from excelling in life?

Elle finds herself in the Realm of Nightmares, befriended by a talking crown who explains that when you move in a dungeon, so does time - it is omniscient, a word I very much failed to speak properly. So this is a fairly traditional rogue-like with turn-based movement and combat.

You will venture through random dungeons, and eventually meet the end boss Vlad, but along the way, you will meet familiars and mid-bosses who will put up more of a fight than standard enemies. You will find items and weapons as you go along with different attack patterns, collect familiars that give you magical powers and in your hub area, you can span soul shards and upgrade your character.

It's not a bad effort, and plays pleasantly enough - but as it's a rogue-like you will be replaying dungeons until you're powerful enough to meet the dungeon boss. If you're prepared for that, then you'll have a reasonably good time.

I give this one 7 relativities out of 10.

[fishbowlhead]

The marks out of 10 have been inspired recently Marty 😁

[MartyG]

Planet Zoo - PC - Day 256 Game 256

What an awful game - frustrating from start to finish.

It gets 2 I hope the lions escape and eat everybody of 10.

[MartyG]

Rail Route - PC - Day 257 Game 257

This is kinda puzzle game, maybe some strategy where you route trains as a controller - you are able to set points and control the flow with the traffic lights.

On the face of it, this sounds like an interesting idea, but in practice, the UI is a little bit too clunky at the moment. Having to reverse trains manually and put them on the station platforms manually, it's awkward and unnecessary. You can buy upgrades that automate this but having to do this manually at all when you're starting out, well it's just not good or friendly - this needs removing from the game entirely.

Trying to work out which train is which is also too clunky. Every single one is the same colour in the UI, so it's impossible to know which is which simply by looking at the screen, you have to click on individual trains to see. Running new tracks is again, not optimal, it's not very easy to see where a bit of track is going to go and it seems the game limits where you can put them, for no other reason than to force you to share a single rail partially.

It is early access, and it really feels like it at the moment - I think there's a good idea here, it just needs a bit more polish.

And the voice-over is dreadful.

So this gets 5 union's been on strike, he's down on his luck it's tough out of 10.