What I Played Today: May 10

Kongregate

I ended up wasting a lot of time playing Flash games in which you pretend of run a restaurant of various types. A pasta place. A grilled cheese place. A bakery. Etc. The games are very soothing to play, and I felt like being soothed.

What I Played Today: July 2

Kongregate

I've been playing a lot of idle games, because I thought about an idle game that I would really like to play and was hoping that it already exists. Not yet.

Oh, if you don't know what idle games are, they are games that you don't actually play. You occasionally click some stuff, but the majority of the time of the game is waiting for stuff to happen. You slowly build up resources, and once you have enough, you build an upgrade that allows you to build up more resources. Occasionally you are allowed to start over from scratch, but not really, because there's ANOTHER resource that you can only gain from playing the game for a longer period of time. Idle games!

Anyway, I played a few, and there was only one that really held my interest, and it is the least interesting one. You basically gain coins slowly overtime, and you have to click a big treasure chest to gain money sometimes. BUT it has the most interesting upgrade path, so...

I also played one that is kinda based on Harvest Moon? It's not very good. You just slowly harvest vegetables, and then go to town to buy upgrades, and you can slowly woo a lady by handing her flowers, it's kinda stupid.

The one that was the most innovative is also the most boring. You slowly build up food and wood and eventually get troops, who you can either put to work slowly building resources, or send them to the map! In which they fight some monsters and gain additionally resources and upgrades. It's interesting, but it also isn't very well developed, and the upgrades are sooooo dull. Oh, you double the production value of various resources, yeah, great, fantastic, I'll just keep doing this forever, I guess.

Anyway, idle games are a blight on the Flash game landscape and I can't stop playing them.

What I Played Today: May 18

Mu Complex, The Wolf Among Us

I need to talk about this "puzzle" game, Mu Complex, that Kongregate thinks I needed to play today. The premise is that you are a random hacker who has gained access to a server in an 50-year-old abandoned facility and get guided through by some unknown (obviously rogue A.I.) source. The puzzles, as they are, are very easy, and the plotline is so basic as to be almost completely ridiculous. Oh word? An A.I. managed to gain sentience in the early 1960's, a couple of years before the idea of intergrated circuits was even common? I totally believe this! Man the camera equipment at this abandoned lab sure is sophisticated. Pretty incredible that they had infrared digital cameras several decades before they were commercially available!

ANYWAY, the puzzles in this game are insultingly easy. A good fourth of the puzzles were simple number-to-letter transposition, 1=A, etc, and even then they gave numerous hints to make sure we "got" it. Also a couple of Bible verse puzzles, because those are impossible to solve on the Internet. Frankly the hardest part was typing in the commands to solve the puzzle exactly as they wanted, and they gave several helpful menus to work our way through the puzzles. Myst was goddamn harder than this, because at least that required trial and error. I will not be playing Chapter 2, is what I'm saying.

I also played through the first chapter of The Wolf Among Us, because I heard it was pretty good and...it was perfectly fine. I really enjoyed the world and the character building was pretty great. Do you want to know EXACTLY what happens? Well then, you need to click a button, son...

What I Played Today: February 25

Castleville Legends, Kongregate

Um...I guess there's a pretty interesting event in Castleville that is actually long enough to give someone time to complete it, as opposed to most of them? Yeah, that's not superinteresting.

I've mostly been dicking around on Kongregate, and ho boy are idle games in now. Totally awesome that the most popular games are games you don't actually play. There's one that's about a bunch of dumb bugs, and there's one that's based on a puzzle game that sucks, and I don't know what I am doing or why. Idle games, man.

What I Played Today: August 17

Terrence's Big Chance

On Kongregate, they featured a game I played a couple of years ago, Terrence's Big Chance, and I remembered that I really enjoyed it, and there was a missing achievement! Apparently I had not gotten the good ending, and so I felt this compulsion to play it all the way through again, 100% this nonsense.

So it's a platformer with a lot of neat little elements, like objectives and a lot of little collectables and info you have to keep track of in order to make sure that the date you are going on goes well. It's super goofy, with a lot of dumb jokes, but the platforming is really really good, and it isn't too bad, although the good ending just made me feel...bad. Like, the date he goes on goes well because he just lies constantly throughout, and then they end up getting married because he never admits to being his own person. It's kinda gross, but hey, joke-y game, I'm just here for the platforming.

What I Played Today: February 4

Card Monsters

I was just screwing around on Kongregate today. Card Monsters is a ridiculous game.

What I Played Today: February 3

Card Monsters, The Cave

I was screwing around on Kongregate, playing one of those dumb CCGs that they have. I still think the design is dang tight in this one (the name of which I am pretty much guessing on), but man...having to powerlevel in order to get better cards is a little annoying.

THIS DOES REMIND ME! So...near the beginning of the year, I had collected a fair bit of points in my PowerUpRewards card, and I didn't want anything in particular, so I was building up to get a KongPro account (since I got free points from Kongregate every day, and would get double if I had a KongPro account). Finally got enough, I cashed in for a free 12-month account (market value: $30). Then, pretty much two weeks after I buy that, they change their policy so that anyone with a PowerUpRewards Plus Card (or whatever) would enjoy the benefits of having a KongPro account! Oh also, KongPro members don't get double points for the badge of the day anymore. The only benefit I got for cashing in for the account that I wouldn't have gotten was 50 free KongCoins (market value: $5.) (I am starting to feel like a complete idiot saying the name of all these dumb things out loud.) So...I felt kind of ripped off at first, and then I remembered that these points were being giving me for free for stuff I would have purchased anyway. (Also, a good 10,000 points of what I had I acquired by trading in games, meaning I in fact got paid to receive those points.) Anyway, long story short, doing what corporations ask you to is dumb.

Also played through the Hillbilly puzzle in The Cave, I had most of it figured out, but I couldn't figure out how to make the weight guessing puzzle work at all, so I cheated and looked it up. And then I set everything on fire. Hurray fire. (?)

What I Played Today: January 29

Kingdoms CCG, Persona 4 Golden

I screwed around on Kongregate, apparently one of those dumb browser CCGs that I was kinda sorta playing had a update, so I tried it out. Meh okay. They were also giving away free gems if I played a certain amount of this other game, and even though it's a Nerdook game (hate that guy), I did it anyway. Whatever, eventually got bored, so...

Also beat the big guy standing on Floor 7 in Kanji's dungeon. The thing you must accept about the big guy is that he is just going to one-shot kill whoever he punches, but he's only going to punch about once every two or three turns, so just get them back up, and hope he doesn't run at you. This has been your not-very-specific strategy advice for some enemy in Persona 4.

What I Played Today: December 20

Innkeeper, Mass Effect 3

I screwed around on Kongregate for a long dumb while. This game Innkeeper is about an inn in Central America, I guess, and it's a standard ugly resource management thing. But for some reason, there's this big twist that the player character is actually dead the whole time? That seems like a stupid twist. Anyway, I got all the achievements for it, because why wouldn't I?

Then did a couple of crap missions in Mass Effect 3, where I did not understand where I should stand and I walked into deadly fog more times than was reasonable. Also, James just randomly shows up somewhere and it was hilarious. He was bored sitting on the ship!

What I Played Today: October 13

Skyrim, Rift, Electric Box 2

I logged into Skyrim, and decided to go after that there Elder Scroll. It's in a Dwarven dungeon, so you know what that means, a bunch of stupid metal spiders. I managed to get killed by a group of falmer when I wasn't paying attention, and then I realized I hadn't saved since the beginning of the zone, so I gave up! Yeah, I'm not proud.

Logged into Rift for half-a-minute, because I got an e-mail saying I accidently gave them 15 more dollars. Hrm. Maybe I should stop doing that? I don't know, they have an expansion coming out. I like expansions.

Also, for some reason, I am trying to complete badges in Kongregate? Man, I don't know, I think I have a reason. I'm pretty sure I have a reason for everything I do. Anyway, it was a hard badge today, for a puzzle game, and I totally cheated, because I got to a stage in which I had to move pieces around while the puzzle was in motion, and I did not care for it. AT ALL. Don't change the rules mid-game, puzzle game.

What I Played Today: September 23

Card Monsters, FTL, Super Hexagon

So, there's this game on Kongregate that I have been irrationally drawn in by, because in my mind it is very well designed. It's super simple; you build a small deck of cards consisting of monsters and items, and you start the game with two of each and 3 crystals. You can drop your monsters on into formation, paying their cost in crystals; the monster in front deals melee damage, the monsters on the side can deal ranged. You can equip the monsters with like-colored equipment. You can also discard cards for more crystals. It's super simple, and yet that's where it gets me, because it's just iterative enough that I will keep playing it. So I did that for hours today. They made it really easy to do for some reason.

Also logged into FTL, took another run at the boss, failed miserably. Goddamn shields. Nerf shields!

The word on the street is that there's this game called Super Hexagon, and everyone is talking about. It's an iOS game, so I downloaded it, and it's a simple dodge game, where you move your little triangle and avoid being hit by all the lines that are coming your way. And it's hard. Dang hard. I've only lasted 15 seconds so far. This is a challenge.

What I Played Today: September 14

NoNo Sparks

What is wrong with me? I serious invested time in this crappy game(s)? They really made a second one? Man, seriously, fuck this. But I did figure out a cheat. IF you fill out the right section, the number will grey out, otherwise, no change. So, it is really easy to just use the process of elimination to cheat your way into figuring out the puzzle. And I use this power to get some easy points and put these crappy games behind me! Why did I choose to play them in the first place? Maybe I have a mental illness? No, that is ableist of me, making light of actual problems. I'm sorry everyone.

What I Played Today: July 29

Some Nonsense

Mainly screwed around on Kongregate today. I played some game made by some dummies I hate for no reason, because of achievements. I don't feel like going into more detail.

What I Played Today: June 14

Papa's Wingeria, Terraria

I was stuck at home today because there was a fire, so I had a lot of dicking around time available, and I decided to burn that extra time doing jack shit!

There was a new Papa's game, and because I'm an idiot, I spent way too much time playing it today. This one is about wings, and son of a bitch did it make me want to get some goddamn wings. The usual patter of these games is the same, although this one is less focused on timing and more concerned about positioning, as the majority of the time is spent very carefully arranging the wings on a platter. It's kinda stupid, but less irritating than the others, and I managed to stick with for a good long while.

Also logged into Terraria because why wouldn't I? Nothing all that interesting happened. I found some adamantium, and got killed by bats a few times too many. Lame.

What I Played Today: April 17

Fez, NoNo Sparks

I am apparently not at all done with Fez! After listening to a group of okay gents spend half-an-hour talking about how Fez is blowing their damn minds, I had to get back in there and start looking around. So I jumped in and immediately went for the one room that I knew I could do something that I couldn't do before. Well...turns out I didn't even need to be there, because I already solved the puzzle attached to it by virtue of having an iPhone. Good for me.

So, I continue to wander around, eventually find a room that explains what the shit is up with those weird pillars (well, one set of those weird pillars), and it really starts moving. Knowing that, I open up a room that takes me to a room with a valve, which lowers the water level in like seven different stages, giving me even more places to wander to. Some of these new areas are trippy as hell too.

Also was pretty pleased with myself when I wandered into a room with pretty much nothing in it, and I totally remember seeing something somewhere, and what do you know that was exactly what I needed! I felt pretty smart.

I also feel stupid for continuing to play this dumb NoNo Sparks game, and brothers, it continues to get dumber. For some reason we needed to make Adam and Eve twice (the second time they don't look like monsters, so that's nice), but after that, there's a really short puzzle in which you make a leaf, and it's labeled Adam 2.8. I started at it for a few seconds being really confused, and then realized that it is...a longer leaf than the one Adam is currently, ahem...wearing. Goddamn awful.

What I Played Today: April 11

Guild Wars, NoNo Sparks

This one mission is really hard! And I have discovered I am playing with some old builds. Like, the metagame has really shifted. Shifted to heavily favor mesmers, actually, so that's pretty great. So I'm going to reequip my team stealing some potential builds from the Internet, and give this another stupid try.

I also just screwed around on Kongregate, and played a dumb Paint-By-Numbers game that really painted itself with a lot of bells and whistles. The worst thing about it is that none of the puzzle actually looked like anything, it was abstract nonsense that was supposed to represent grass or crazy crab (crazy crab?) Also, the game is Biblically dubious. In it, you play Dr. Dog, who is sitting in the clouds creating the world, including water, trees, knowledge, etc. You get where this is coming from. But deeper in the game, you start playing as a this other guy, hanging out below the level in an all-red landscape. You know, the Devil. And one of the Devil's puzzles is Adam, the first man. What? Huh? How does that make any sense? I don't know why that makes me mad.

What I Played Today: March 10

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Buffalo Bison Revenge, Earn to Die

I did something super impressive in Reckoning, today. I killed a giant thing called the Balor. It was not completely unlike the Balrog, just not on fire and a lot bigger. It was going to destroy this city, but I stopped him. Go me.

Also played a few flash games, one involved driving a truck through some zombies (it was dull) and the sequel to a flinging game, which had pretty much the same set-up as the first one, and reused a lot of the same assets, so it felt a bit cheap. I couldn't really tell the difference between the two, which is not a problem just should have. I also didn't finish because it was taking forever.

What I Played Today: August 6

Rift, Kongregate, Deadly Premonition, Rune Age

Oh my it is good to be home and playing some video games. I put in some true time in Rift because that is apparently something I play and enjoy. They have started their next event, which has a total of three quests, two happening within ten feet of the questgiver, so I'm not super excited about it. I'm just trying to get myself to 50, because that's where the action is.

I put in some time on Kongregate, including for some reason going to my local Gamestop to pick up a promotional card for Tyrant that would enter me into a contest to win a very significant gift card, and also give me like an entire dollar in promo points. That's totally worth the price of gas, right? I also played a flash game that I really enjoyed, so much so that I've forgotten everything about it.

Also, tried a solo game of Rune Age, and I got my ass handed to me. Oh jeez, I thought that this game would be pretty simple, since there aren't a lot of different cards, but there are three resource types, which affect a lot of different things. Also, to fight off the huge monsters, you need to have an extremely effective hand, which you can't do when you don't have a lot of control in what gets in there. And...if you happen get attacked during the event stage, your hand doesn't replenish, so you basically lose a turn. This is dangerous in a solo game.

AND THEN. Oh dogs. I stayed up until 7 a.m. in the morning to finish up Deadly Premonition. It was a really good time and I did it because I was really curious what was going to happen next! I understand the game doesn't look very good and the controls are wonky, but I enjoyed it a lot. I played all the way from Chapter 18 to the end, when things finally started getting interesting. Now, I'm going to avoid spoiling anything, because you, YOU THERE, should play it too, get over the bad textures and the insane translations, and just experience this nonsense. I was thrown by twists a good half-dozen times (mainly because I'm superbad at seeing twists coming. I just never see them.)

Oh, one anecdote. At one point I found myself in a mansion looking at a picture of some ladies, at least one of which had been killed, so I think this is some creepy potential victim's picture. However, I only know of five young unmarried ladies in the town, the killer's primary target, and there are six girls in the picture. So I'm looking at it, trying to figure out what's up with that, until I realize that one of the "girls" is actually a male character you've met in a dress. Blew my goddamn mind.

What I Played Today: June 29

Tyrant, Learn 2 Fly, Rift

I finally finished that level you guys! Now I've moved on to the next level and it's already a lot easier. Oh thank goodness.

Also played a launching game, because why shouldn't I? Oh right, because I find them boring and I hate them. But I really want achievements! One weird thing about this one was there were two stores that required different currency, but you get each type of currency in fairly similar ways. I could not figure out the point.

Also downloaded like a gig of updates for Rift, and they changed dang everything again. For one thing, the server I was hanging out on suddenly became the domain of the newbs, so they asked me to change servers. But they wouldn't let me change to the one server where someone I know plays, so I said screw it, and just played. The next world event has started (after the last one failed to end, the hell), and I'm already liking it a bit better. The rewards are better, the quests are more interesting, there are more things to do. Most of the action seems settled around a region I had pretty much cleared, so I went back there and screwed around, and ended up getting my name broadcast to the entire server for being the first player to complete one of the World Event quests. My first thought was, "Hey, neat!" then I remembered I was on the newb server, so doing something that requires being at least level 40 where everyone else isn't quite 10 yet isn't that impressive.

What I Played Today: June 27

Tyrant

Um, didn't play much today, spent the evening "working," but I am still trying to pass this one stupid level on Tyrant. I've been trying for over a week now. It's just stupid hard; the commander can consistently hit your forces for 2 damage a turn, and all his troops come into play in two turns or less, meaning you either have your forces die instantly from the commander, or die before they can do anything by the troops. I have no idea how you're supposed to pass this, and frankly I'm getting a little grouchy.