Matthew Przybysz
Week ending 6/24/14
Hey everyone and welcome back to GADD. One quick note before I get started, it turns out last weeks QOTW was completely pointless and there was another option that I forgot about. When I wrote that question up it somehow completely slipped my mind that Valiant Hearts was coming out in a week so I’ll just be going with that one instead since I’ve been hyped for it for a while.
Wednesday
Didn’t get a chance to play anything at all
Thursday
Trials Fusion
Oh man that was freakin intense. I went right back into the second extreme level and just kept failing miserably at every aspect. I was so sure I was going to hit the 30 minute time limit, flunk out automatically and wind up rage quitting for a long time. But then, with under a minute to go, a MIRACLE occurred and I actually was able to successfully complete the last damn jump and get across the finish line! I briefly went into the third extreme course, but my brain was just completely fried at that point and I was in no position to even attempt it.
Mercenary Kings
Went back into this playing co-op, and not a whole lot of exciting stuff happened, but we did finish the Lieutenant rank missions, therefore officially putting us halfway through the game. It was after this point that I realized the Steam sale had started, so I went to check it out, and there was nothing that I was interested in (damn influx of Early Access bullshit ruins the Steam sale. Finish your damn game, then maybe I’ll buy it if it looks like it could be good.) However the damn “team” aspect of competing against other teams to score the most points (via making sets of trading cards) made me give a damn about that stuff again and I ended up playing some Steam games.
Organ Trail: The Director’s Cut
As you would likely be able to guess from the name, Organ Trail is a takeoff of the Oregon Trail, however you’re leading a group of zombie outbreak survivors across country to a supposed safe haven where the outbreak hasn’t hit. It honestly isn’t too different from the regular Oregon Trail, except there are a few action sequences thrown in because of zombies and other looters. My first play-through everything went real bad FAST and we wound up dead on the side of the road in no time, but I’m sure it was in no way due to my “walk it off you bitches” mentality towards the sick and injured. Second trip was starting off on a similarly bad note once the car broke down and I used up all my scrap parts attempting to fix it and kept failing over and over again, despite using enough parts to get a 70%+ chance of successful repair. Eventually I got to the point where I was completely out of scrap and nobody was willing to trade me for more, so eventually after a few days on the side of the road, I put a bullet into all of my friends’ heads, you know, for their benefit so they wouldn’t have a slow painful death! It was humane damnit! Suddenly I remembered you could scavenge for supplies if you were willing to fight off the zombies, so I went and did that and got more supplies and FINALLY the car was working again. It was amazing how much easier it is when you only have to take care of yourself instead of worrying about four others as well. Eventually I got loaded up on EVERYTHING through trading and scavenging, I had plenty of food, plenty of medkits, plenty of scrap for the car and plenty of ammo, but I got cocky and went out to scavenge more, and didn’t even use a medkit cause the zombie activity was only listed as “moderate” and I’ve taken on worse than that without getting bit. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, I got bit and died all because of my own stupidity and hubris. I was so heartbroken and embarrassed that I was unable to make a third attempt.
Super Meat Boy
I originally loaded this up just to leave it idle and farm trading cards, cause I’m not above that shit, but as soon as I saw the title screen, I HAD to play it. I fucking love Super Meat Boy, but as soon as I got into it, I discovered that my wired 360 controller isn’t at 100% anymore. To be more specific, the A button doesn’t always register button presses right away like it should. In most games it wouldn’t be that big of an issue, but in Super Meat Boy you need that pixel perfect precision, and anything other than that is completely unplayable. I blame GTA V and all the mashing of the A button you need to do to run in that game. After that I just loaded up a few games and farmed cards from them without actually playing em.
Friday
Blocks That Matter
This is a game that I’ve owned on Steam for AGES (probably around 2 years), but am just now loading it up for the first time. It’s a puzzle platformer where you play as a drilling robot and it has elements of Minecraft and Tetris mixed in. You drill blocks (sand, wood, etc) and each different type of block has different properties, then you have to restack them so you can get onto higher platforms. The catch is that you can only stack them into Tetris shapes. The concept definitely seems cool, but I only played a few levels because that was all I had time for.
Saturday
EA Sports UFC demo
Went through the tutorial and then did 3 fights in the demo, all as Jon Jones cause I was too lazy to switch to Gustafsson. Yeah it seems well made, but it’s just not for me, I just still prefer the THQ UFC games. The submission system seems to add a forced level of complexity, that would be nice if it was fun, but it’s just not.
NBA 2K14
Received my first trophy in this game in a while, and I did it in the most “fuck you” way possible. The trophy was for proving a legend wrong after being called out on FakeTwitter, and in this case Magic Johnson was saying I wasn’t passing enough, and was told to get at least 12 to prove him wrong. So, I didn’t attempt a single shot until late in the 3rd quarter. Magic wants me to pass? I’ll pass damnit!
The Stanley Parable
This is another Steam game that I’ve owned for quite some time, but never got around to actually playing. I’m sure most out there know what The Stanley Parable is, but for those who don’t it’s not really so much of a game as it is a VERY open ended story that you work your way through with a cheeky narrator who will get mad at you if you don’t follow what he says you’re supposed to be doing. I worked my way to three different endings and while it’s a cute fun experience, I have NO idea how some people on my friends list have invested 20+ hours into it. What exactly am I missing?
Sunday
Mercenary Kings
Went into the Captain’s missions and got a little more than halfway through the rank before stopping to watch the US World Cup game. Would have gotten much further if we didn’t run into the mission from hell. Had 4 1/2 minutes to make it all the way across the map to talk to a contact, and there was one IMPOSSIBLE ass jump that we just could not make no matter how hard we tried. After what was likely half an hour of trial and error, back at base camp I wound up randomly unequipping my weapon and discovering that I could run much faster and get longer jumps. It was always known that the game had a weight system in it, but this is over halfway through the game and the FIRST time that weight had become an issue in making a jump, so I feel completely justified in calling that mission complete fucking bullshit.
Bit.Trip Runner 2
Yeah I bet you guys thought this would never show up on GADD again after I beat it months ago (and then went back to again for trophy cleanup purposes) but somehow I just sat there at my PS3 screen saying “shit it’s 1 AM, it’s too late to start up Xillia, what should I play?” and somehow winding up back in Runner 2. I decided to go through all the stages on Quite Hard this time, lets see how far I get in this quest before I give up on it. Ended up replaying through the majority of world 1 before deciding to give it a break, who wants to place bets on whether or not I’ll ever return to this again?
Monday
Mercenary Kings
Completed the Captain’s missions, and the last mission/final boss fight was both awesome and completely infuriating. It was awesome because it was a fight unlike any other in the game, and it was great to see the game changing itself up some, however he ran away to the other boss spawn points FAR too often and was just infuriating to fight.
Tales of Xillia
Why the hell do I keep waiting until 1 AM or later to start this game up? I know I’m not going to make any progress, but I never start it up at a decent time! I’m sure once I get to the point where it really hooks its claws into me, I’ll start it earlier because I want to play it all day, but for now I just never come across it until it’s too damn late to put any real time into it. The game just gave me what will probably be a game long hunt for hidden treasures sidequest, which I’ll likely ignore and only pick up the ones I happen to stumble upon. Also I just went into a new village and the native fruits are freakin napples and poranges. Seriously Tales? I know you can at least do a LITTLE better than that! I know I’ve touched on it before, but I just love the brief optional interludes that occur between the characters and the post battle conversations they have. Sure, the post battle scenes can get repetitive, but they just show so much more personality in such a small time frame than most RPGs get across in long ass cutscenes. Plus this series is one of the few “serious” RPGs to have any kind of sense of humor as well, which goes a long way with me. As soon as I turned it off, I now sit here wondering if I saved before I did so. Shit, it would only be an hour or so that I lose if I didn’t, but I hate having to replay through anything.
Tuesday
Zafehouse: Diaries
I have absolutely zero idea what this is, but I caught it at the very end of a GOG flash sale (as in literally less than a minute remaining) panicked and hit the buy button because the ONE screenshot I saw of it looked like it could be interesting. It was only $2 (or maybe even $1.50?) so if it sucks..who cares? After an hour of playing the game, I have absolutely zero fucking idea what’s going on. It’s a zombie survival strategy game, but right now I’m just randomly clicking on locations on the map and my survivors are just investigating and reporting back. I have no idea how to attack zombies or how to try and take over spots to use them as bases or even what I should be doing to try to advance the game. I feel so damn lost. Maybe I’ll return at some point to try and figure out what the hell is going on, but I’m good for now.
Bit.Trip Runner 2
Had plans to come back in and finish the first world, but I only got a couple of stages in and my wrist started KILLING me, which is unusual cause that almost never happens to me from video game playing. But yeah, I only got about 20 minutes in before I was forced to stop. Oh well, that’ll probably be it for the week.
So that was my week in gaming. I have NO idea what happened to my plans from last week as I barely played Xillia at all and didn’t touch Stick It To The Man once. I’m downloading Valiant Hearts as I write this so hopefully there will be a healthy dose of that in next week’s GADD and maybe I’ll get back to Stick It as well? I forgot to put this in last week’s GADD, but I’ve also set up a Twitch account for the PS4 sharing stuff, so when I play a single player PS4 game, there’s a good chance I’ll be streaming it as well at http://www.twitch.tv/gadd_live
QUESTION OF THE WEEK:
Based on the ridiculous amount of jumping around I did this week, it’s clear that I have no idea what I want to play, so I’ll ask you, and this time I actually mean it! I swear! Out of all the games in this and previous GADDs, what do you want me to return to? I promise I’ll at least attempt to get to anything that gets votes.
