The 365 Days 2022 Gaming Challenge - achievement unlocked.

[MartyG]

All Walls Must Fall - PC Day 76 Game 76

This one is a strategy game utilising a slightly unique take on the genre by making the turns and the story time manipulation related.

There's been an explosion, a nuclear one which kind of breaks a lot of things and your agent, Kai, must find out whodunnit. By placing our agent in the same environment in different timeframes we can gain bits of information from different points of view.

It's kind of a forced mechanic in the first instance as the game seems to force failures at first just to make you rewind (and thus use the time mechanic) in order to introduce you to how it's used.

There's quite a fun conversation challenge mechanic too, your replies in which can give you different success or failure outcomes.

Overall it's a bit of a different way of doing things and makes it worth taking a look at - so this one gets 7 not quite Tom Bakers out of 10.

[MartyG]

Dig or Die - PC - Day 77 Game 77

This is Terraria like sandbox game where you Dig or Die. In my case dig then die.

At first I wasn't able to build that much as the auto-builder didn't have a lot of options and my miniaturizer (which is how you get resources), couldn't get iron or rock. It took me a while to work out you could make a second-level builder with certain resources as the icons look the same, but once I made one of those I could upgrade the miner and get better resources.

Trouble was even then there was stuff I needed plantwise I couldn't find to progress. Still, I think I prefer it to Terraria as I didn't die as much as I do in that. Combat was a little easier and I could build auto-turrets that took out some enemies. I'd like to go back in the builder mode which turns off the attacks (of which they are a lot) as I prefer the build and explore in these games more than the shooting that gets a bit irritating after a while.

That said, I played for over an hour and didn't get too bored, so I give this one 7 not nearly enough oxygen included out of 10.

[MartyG]

Star Singularity - PC - Day 78 Game 78

This is a 2D top-down space game. Still in early access and on reflection quite limited content-wise, I still managed to play this for nearly two hours.

I flew in the vacuum of space, I shot at enemy ships, I mined myriads of asteroids and crafted items from their lucrative yields. I also blew up a sun and killed millions of people - but that's just the start of the story, one I didn't really progress very far as I was too busy flying around space.

You have the ability to create a fleet of ships too, which will follow you about and help in combat - this isn't really that much more than holding down a mouse button and aiming the cursor in the right place, but you can upgrade weapons, shields, engines and generators etc, so there's quite a bit to discover crafting wise.

Overall the first impressions were pretty good, but there's likely not much longevity in it - for the price of around £4 tho, I can happily give this one 7 pigs in space out of 10.

[MartyG]

Teardown - PC - Day 79 Game 79

This is a voxel-based physics game where you destroy things. It's a bit of a one-trick pony in that you smashy smashy stuff and it has particle physics so that things fall down around it (kind of what Crackdown 3 promised with the "powah of teh cloud" but for reals).

Thing is, once you've seen this that's about all it has to offer. There is mission-based stuff where you break into locations and steal things but I couldn't get past the fourth mission in the 60 seconds I had to complete it (I thought I could take out the electricity to stop the alarms, but no) and it seems you have to complete these to unlock the other areas in sandbox mode.

Overall it's not a bad effort and the physics destruction is well done, but I'm not sure this game really offers all that much beyond that. So I give this one 7 Isaac Newtons out of 10.

[MartyG]

Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 - PC - Day 80 Game 80

Based around the Warhammer universe, you are a space fleet admiral and control massive space battle cruisers (and little destroyers and huge base ships too). Well, I say control, I was playing the game for over an hour and I think I was only actually playing it for 5 or 10 minutes.

This isn't a good thing as the level of interaction with the game is pretty poor - it's more like you're watching what's going on rather than controlling what's going on. At one point, you're told to turn on the auto-battle thing and all you do at that point is say attack this ship then that ship. The AI was rubbish at doing this and turning it off and controlling the ships individually, the enemy was soon space dust.

It certainly looks pretty, but I enjoyed the first game more. Then again, I enjoyed Battlestar Galactica Deadlock even more and I recommend that game any day over this one.

I don't think it's a bad game, maybe the campaign proper is more hands-on, however, based on first impressions this gets 5 by your commands out of 10.

[QualityChimp]

I pop into the thread to see if anything has particularly impressed you and admire the rating scales, but also check that your reviews are not just endless pages of "All work and no play makes Marty a dull boy."

[MartyG]

Dark Bestiary - PC - Day 81 Game 81

Welcome to my myriad of monster menagerie. In Dark Bestiary you are a soldier, or warlock or necromancer or another class with fighting skillz. And a beard and haircut.

On this grid of squares you will encounter monsters you need to destroy - but in this world, there is no moving diagonally - you're not a bishop, okay? No, you're a rook and you will only move in straight lines, and it will cost you action points. Lots of action points. You also need these action points to cast spells and swing swords. The same spells and swings, over and over and over and over. Until everything is mashed. If you're a necromancer, you can bring the dead back to undead - doesn't matter whether these were plants or rats tho, the result is always a human skeleton warrior. Look, that's just how it works, don't ask daft questions.

The above text is better than the story too - but hey, it's £9 and that will only buy you two starbucks (the coffee not the space pilot) these days. Based on that, this one gets 4 what do you mean you want a health potion, you don't have the right ingredients to make one and they're not for sale to you out of 10.

[MartyG]

Plebby Quest The Crusades - PC - Day 82 Game 82

This one is a strategy game, not so much 4X as 2.5X. It starts you off on the questline as a rulers son who must command some generals, which in turn do tasks in the town and kingdom - such as go to a mosque and stack books, or go to an inn and fight ruffians.

Battles are fair simple, you have rows of troops and they move forward or backwards. You can swap the rows they're on and do special attacks such as a charge, but there's not really much more to it than that.

Along with fighting there is diplomacy and trading for which you click on buttons. So it's a bit of a simple affair, yet I still managed to play it for over an hour. There are also a lot of MEMEs. So many MEMEs.

I'm not sure whether I really liked it - I think it kind of fooled me into thinking I was enjoying it by making me play book tetris. In all tho, I'm giving this 6 sultans of swing out of 10.

[MartyG]

Jydge - PC - Day 83 Game 83

Jydge is a top-down twin-stick shooter where justice is a bullet from your gun. Similar to Police Stories, but not as frustrating with the random unfair deaths. You go on various missions to either kill all criminals, rescue the hostages, confiscate criminal gains or a bit of all three.

Along the way, there are special completion conditions that will get you tokens that allow for upgrades to your person or gavel, from secondary mode fire to mods like beam fire while reloading - lots of different mods to play around with and multiple upgrade slots to unlock with confiscated cash, there are plenty of different loadouts to play with.

With each Act, there's a final boss fight which then unlocks a few additional map conditions to earn further tokens, with different fire modes to use adding a fair bit of replayability. You will die a lot, but the deaths usually feel like it's because you made an error, rather than the game being unfair (although a couple of times my character got stuck, which I wasn't sure if it was a glitch or something else).

Other than that occasional little snaggle, this one is worth having a play of, and so I give it 8 Dredds out of 10.

[MartyG]

Wildermyth - PC - Day 84 Game 84

An RPG yarn with a party of players. Initially, this looked like it would be very RPG heavy with a huge layout of different types of stats (and actually I wouldn't have minded that too much), but after the character creation, this didn't really pop up that much in the game. After introducing the combat system, in which I decided to engage enemies with Wylnod wielding a frying pan in one hand and Fuddy aiming his bow in the other, I cooking whacked the wolf and went to resuce the maiden Hematta, who was good with a stick and infusing into map objects to use their inherent natural properties as abilities.

Along the way I also recruited Lian, a fierce warrior who died in her first adventure in combat. Chucked her in a shallow grave with some incantation to give us a couple of legacy points, but her death led to Fuddy getting a blue scar on his once handsome face due to a not-so-dead Gorgon that I didn't actually properly kill. He now scares cats.

At that point, Act 1 closes and the party rests easy as 10 years of peace grace the land and maybe next time I will see what Act 2 offers.

Wildermyth gets 7 Treguards out of 10.

[MartyG]

Control Ultimate Edition - PC Day 85 Game 85

The ultimate edition, which doesn't seem to include the additional DLC. So, not really that ultimate then.

It's a third-person action game with powers. This is just as well because at the start of the game with just the gunplay, it's not that great. There's a clear emphasis with the game pushing you towards using things like the telekinesis, as these have lock-on where there's is no aim-assist for the gunplay (you can turn this on in the menus, not sure if that affects achievements tho).

I did quite enjoy the game once I'd gained the first power - had it just been weapon-based, it wouldn't have lasted two hours. Pretty creepy in places and the multi-media stuff hidden away inside rooms on the monitors, reel-to-reel recorders and radios etc, have some interesting stuff on them. The story is pretty well-paced too. I don't think the combat is perfect, but it feels like it's one of those games that massively improves as you skill up.

Control gets 8 (not baby) yodas out of 10.

[MartyG]

Final Theory - PC Day 86 Game 86

This is a 4X (or more 3X I think) set in space. It's a fairly basic 4X concentrating largely on expansion and positioning rather than huge branching research trees and base management.

You start off with a basic three-ship fleet deployable from your reserves and can make one fleet movement per turn, regardless of how many fleets you have deployed. Every other turn you can deploy a harvester (to mine Tacknium - the main resource) with a max of four per star. However, there are only so many stars that can be mined (I only found four in total) and you can only deploy fleets or build more ships at certain stars (the ones with bases). There is no ability to construct bases around stars, so you're stuck with the facilities at systems you discover as is and no more.

Later you'll get the ability to send propaganda satellites, allowing the capturing of two systems at a time, but at that point, the AI will be deploying the imperial fleets that are huge and take over systems without battles. There are 3 vs 3 and if you discover a system that allows you to expand your fleet by an additional ship 3 vs 4 or 4 vs 4 combat plus the ability to upgrade shields, armour and weapon systems of those ships, but it's all a bit noddy turn-based suff with some odd AI behaviour; I had one ship left that would have blown up had the AI attacked once more, instead they ran away allowing me to recharge shields and take them out (the only battle I did win).

It was pleasant enough to play, but it's not one I'd want to go back to as there's really not enough to it as far as a 4X goes. This one gets 5 Sid Meiers out of 10.

[MartyG]

Dragon Blaze - PC - Day 87 Game 87

A bullet-hell shooter. Didn't enjoy this, and actually I normally quite enjoy bullet-hell games, but this one I couldn't work out where the hitbox box was and gaps I'd expect to be able to make it through, I wasn't making it thru. Maybe my eye just wasn't in properly today (and I definitely wasn't playing at optimum), but it also didn't help that the Xbod pad decided to stop working on the analog stick and I had to start using the D-Pad (edit - just tested the pad on the calibration and it's fine, so that was the game screwing up, it just decided to stop responding in game).

So, not sure whether it was me or the game, but I'd had enough after 20 minutes. So I'm only going to give this one 5 how many pixels wide did you make it out of 10. I think there are better shooters on Steam.

[MartyG]

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw - PC Day 88 Game 88

A space adventure where you play a space captain trying to complete bounties and fetch missions. At first a did a bit of flight training and shot some drones. Then I played a bit of 8-ball pool and spoke to a bartender.

Having my fill of spherical physics, I went to space to see a man about a cargo - turns out I had to steal the cargo (so much from a fetch quest). Instead of heading for that, played a bit of slots and dice poker. Won a few creds, went into space and it suddenly went of Pete Tong.

With a dozen laser turrets firing at me at once, I stood no chance. I took out two of them and died. I then quit.

I actually think the presentation of this is pretty good, and it probably makes a good buy in a sale, but wasn't too impressed with a sudden spike in enemy fire which just rinsed thru my shields without me being able to do much about it.

For this reason, I give this one 5 Han Solos out of 10.

[MartyG]

Train Station Renovation - PC - Day 89 Game 89

In this game you are a janitor, an electrician, a plumber, a painter, a constructor, a mechanic and waste disposal.

Arriving at my derelict station, the first port of call was to get a skip to dump all the crap laying around into. Next, all the graffitti adjourning the walls - nope, that's got to go - no one cares that JV Loves BL. Cobwebs are a problem too - sweep those away. Skanky toilets, well a new sink, bog and soap dispenser, and why not a hand drier too. Go on then.

Finally, it's time to decorate the place, a splash of paint, some plant pots - bins, essentially so I don't have to come here again. Then a desk for the station master, a laptop and great big TV. A few benches for the plebbies and last of all, a ticket and vending machine.

All done, time to go home. I give this one 8 Hong Kong Phooeys out of 10.