So, it’s not exactly a secret anymore that I own a
Steam account now. At first, I was reticent about it because I didn’t want to
spend a lot of money there, I was kinda sick of hearing from everyone around me
about how great and amazing and good it was (you know, the Frozen Effect), and
also I had no idea if I would find anything there to interest me. I’ve been a
Nintendo guy my entire life, it’s pretty difficult to take up a new way to play
games (like moving to another console, or move to PC gaming) when you’ve grown
up with one company.
And yet, I found. Oh, did I find a lot of interesting
games. With minimal spending, and taking advantage of the Steam summer sale, I
managed to get a whole lot of games for a fairly reasonable sum. Going by
recommendations, interesting TVTropes pages, and in general looking for games I
either knew about or heard friends were playing. I made many interesting
discoveries as a result. And I decided to start the fourth year on Planned All
Along on a happy note by telling you about many of the discoveries I’ve made!
Will these be reviewed sometime later? Maybe, maybe not. I will probably start
reviewing Steam games at some point. I hope I do and it brings me more readers.
Until then, enjoy this little list I put together.
12. Legend of Numbers
Stupidly addictive Facebook casual games! I fell into
Candy Crush, then it was Pepper Panic, and a few others… I’m well aware of
those, and I don’t consider myself less of a gamer for having played them.
Addictive? Yes. Free-to-play? Yes. In fact, you’ll notice many of these games
are free-to-play, because my first steps on Steam were to download as many free-to-play
games as I could get. Mostly MMOs. Then I broadened my search and got a few
casual games… but the only one that really struck me was Legend of Numbers,
where lining up three of the same number results in the addition of these
numbers appearing on the grid in white (three 1s =3, three 2s = 6, all the way
to 8s = 24 or 9s= 27). Then you need to reach certain goals by combining these
white numbers together, always combining a number with another of itself. It’s
an interesting game, but not one to spend dozens of hours on.
11. AdVenture Capitalist
More stupidly addictive games, this time idles and
clickers. AdVenture Capitalist is actually three “management” clickers, one for
Earth, one for the Moon, one for Mars. Same concept as other clickers;
restarting after being relatively far in nets you a bonus currency (angels)
that serves to increase your profits and give you bonuses. I really should stop
wasting my time on Idle games. First I had Clicker Hero, then Cookie Clicker,
now this! Oddly enough, it is the game I spent the most time in… but that’s
because I let it run in the background while I listen to music and do other
stuff – among others, when I write reviews. That’s the advantage of Idles. The
disadvantage is that you end up going back to see its progression every few
minutes, like a social media addict does with Facebook or Twitter. Wait, let me
check mine… Ah, nothing new. Good! What was I talking about again? Oh, right.
The thing with Adventure Capitalist is that it’s three-in-one (not counting the
bonus events!), so it’s even MORE addictive. Well… the reason this and Legend
of Numbers are so low on the list is that they remain on the low end of
interesting games on Steam. Everything that follows will be much better.
10. Worm.is: The Game
On my quest for free-to-play games, I downloaded
really all kinds of things. Worm.is turns out to be one of the first games I
ever downloaded, because I liked the idea of a PvP version of Snake. The whole
idea here is that you’re a worm gobbling up dots and bugs and growing, but you
can’t die by hitting yourself (unlike the original Snake). You’re moving in a
room with other worms, so you need to avoid them, because hitting them will
kill you. If you kill another worm, you can gain a neat bonus in points by
gobbling up the dots it left behind. There are many modes available and I found
my time in this game fairly enjoyable as I was still a newbie on Steam and
didn’t yet know better. To this day, I still go back to it sometimes, for a few
minutes.
9. Team Fortress 2
I have yet to play this game more before I can
discussing it in greater depth, but chances are that, if you have Steam, you
know this game – scratch that, if you got anywhere close to the Internet, you
know this game. Its popularity is simply incredible. And I can see why. Even
though I downright sucked on my first time playing, I really enjoyed it. It
could be annoying to face some of the tougher opponents, but after a while I
started getting the hang of the controls. As soon as I have less on my plate, review-wise,
I’ll go back to play it some more. The comedy around the game seems to be right
up my alley. Only downside, I’m really not good at FPS in general, due to
hardly ever playing the genre before (I largely prefer a platformer or an RPG),
so I still need some practice when it comes to aiming and shooting. I’m sure
after a few more matches I’ll spend a LOT of time in this game. Plus there’s
that crate I got for free, and I need a key for it…
8. Undertale
I’m putting this one low on the list because for one,
it’s not a personal discovery (I knew much of what the game had to offer
already), and I’ve already discussed my experience on another post on this
blog. There isn’t much else I can add, really; I like the characters, the
inclusion of multiple paths means it’s possible to see many facets of their
personalities, and every action from every character is justified in a way or another,
which is probably the most important thing in storytelling ever. I’ve completed
True Pacifist and am perfectly satisfied with it. Honestly, I could probably go
on and on about it, but everything that could be said has been said, so I don’t
think throwing my voice among the millions of other Undertale fans would make
any difference (despite my previous post hoping to change some things… yeah, I
can get contradictory like that sometimes). So yeah, great game, great story,
but I won’t talk about it much more. Unless it can get me a lot of views… What?
Can you blame me for doing a bit of clickbaiting after more than three years
writing this goddamned site and still not making any money? Can you blame me???
…Oh… Sorry, I think I lost it for a moment there…
7. You Have To Win The Game
I had never heard about that game before I downloaded
it. It seemed interesting, I took it. One of those things you get on a whim, in
the hopes that you’ll enjoy them. Really, the same thing that happens when I
have too much choice at the local EBGames for my Wii console and I pick some
games that I never heard of before, and end up liking them – or hating them,
thank you Anubis II. You Have To Win The Game is an extremely challenging
experience where you start off with little to no abilities, in a world where
spikes abound and enemies are indestructible. First you gain blue and pink
platforms that let you cross dangerous areas, then you find the power to jump
twice, then the power to cling to walls… and while you still remain a one hit
point wonder, at the end the game becomes a lot more interesting – not to
mention that password section at the end, which is a superb idea. A game that I
truly recommend, as long as you like having your nerves tested by something of
extreme difficulty.
6. Clockwork Tales: Of Glass And Ink
One of my first actual purchases on Steam was this
game. I had about 4 dollars to spend, so I took one of the first things that
seemed interesting at that price. Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink is a fairly
normal point-and-click adventure with puzzles and elements of hidden object
games. It’s not trying to reinvent the genre, it’s just trying to be
entertaining – which it’s meant to be, it’s a friggin’ video game. This story
takes us into a steampunk world where agent Evangeline Glass is attempting to
find where her friend, Professor Ambrose Ink, is being held captive, all while
attempting to solve the mystery of the unnatural earthquakes plaguing the
surrounding towns. It’s not very long, it has most of the standard puzzles, it
has collectibles as well as different difficulty settings… and, once again, the
entire universe around Evangeline has this bizarre hard-on for puzzles of all
kinds, especially on doors that should function with normal locks! I still
don’t get that. If you have a thief who’s smart enough to solve your puzzle,
you can kiss your expensive stuff goodbye! Anyway, it’s nothing spectacular,
but it’s a lot of fun and I was entertained. And I will probably try to play
through it again someday on a higher difficulty setting.
5. RPG Maker VX Ace
Is it cheating to include one software that isn’t
technically a game? Screw it, I’m doing it anyway. I’ve always liked to
download the free, “trial” versions of RPG Maker. I may be a reviewer, but I
enjoy the thought of making my own stories, and perhaps my own games. As I
discovered, it’s an awful lot of work, seeing as it took me 24 hours to program
about 10 minutes of playing time, and that’s because I haven’t tried to get my
own resources yet! And I am not really creating my own story either, I’m
building a game out of a webcomic I follow that has the potential to become a
really, really good RPG. A webcomic so big, I could probably give this game 20
hours of gameplay at least, on the basis of side-quests alone. Thing is, with
the trial versions I would always build silly little games about beating up
enemies that get stronger, and little to no plot. Now that I have bought the
full version of an RPG Maker, I am actually trying to get something serious
made. I spend a lot of time looking online for solutions to the problems I
encounter while programming. Anyway, I got that one for 11 dollars at the Steam
summer sale, and I hope any of you people out there with great game ideas
someday get the chance to buy this software, at a reduced price, and maybe try
your hand at game-making!
4. TERA
Without a doubt the biggest game I have downloaded
from Steam, and the only such large game I’ve kept. TERA is also one of the few
MMORPGs I’ve tried so far, and I still go back to it every once in a while. The
visuals are breathtaking, the difficulty is correct so far (not that I’ve done
much so far, I’m only Level 16 at the moment) and I’m slowly discovering it,
whenever I have time to do that and there isn’t another game taking my
attention away. I personally went with a Baraka sorcerer, in part because it’s
the complete opposite of what I usually play, and in part because I like the
idea of playing a guy who looks tough but turns out to be a magic user. The
truly important boss battle I’ve had so far took me well over thirty minutes
because I haven’t yet made friends in it so I haven’t joined a guild… I’m not used
to that MMORPG stuff yet… so maybe I will at some point. Though before I get
in-depth with this one, I’ll probably go through a lot more games.
3. The Beginner’s Guide
 |
| And it has some really weird moments, like that human with a cube for a face with "LISTEN" written on it. |
2. South Park: The Stick of Truth
So many games are now available for me to buy thanks
to Steam. Fallout 4, Call of Duty, DOOM, Far Cry, GTA V… I kinda want No Man’s
Sky when it comes out, too. But one game I never thought I would actually buy
is South Park: The Stick of Truth. This RPG, written by Trey Parker and Matt
Stone and filled to the brim with references to the show’s 17 seasons (at the
point when it was released), sees most of the child population of South Park in
the middle of a LARP and they treat it as serious fucking business. We play the
New Kid (who’ll be called Douchebag no matter what you name him) as he gets
thrown into this adventure where some of the most memorable villains of the
South Park series will somehow decide to strike, and people treat it like it’s
a normal everyday thing. So many sidequests, so many battle elements that are
interesting, so many places to visit (even Canada! We can get poutine in this game, for
Christ’s sake! That gets a point in my book!), so many items that are
references to the show… I could go on and on. I never thought I’d laugh so
much, really; farts tend to lose their comedic, um, flavor, after you’ve heard
too many. I suppose the sheer absurdity of the world around is one of the
reasons to be playing this game? I found Jesus after a game of hide and seek
and became pals with him! How’s that? I also like the slight edge of
deconstruction brought by the game and its RPG mechanics. It’s mostly relegated
to jokes, but dammit, this game has thousands of jokes.
P.S. I am a Butters fan!
1. Unturned
The big discovery! Since I started off with
free-to-play games, one of the things I found was Unturned, suggested by an
online friend. It’s a survival game, another genre I’m not used to… I was
intrigued by the Minecraft-like blocky style, and wanted to see just how
complex the game was. And boy is it complex. You start off naked in one of
three places and must survive zombie attacks by entering houses (windows and
doors all mysteriously vanished from the world), dressing up, gathering food,
healing items and crafting materials in order to build everything you need. All
while taking into account noise, proximity, your level of hunger, thirst… I
could go on and on… By cutting trees, you get wood to build walls, doors,
windows, you can make your own base and then create a miniature farm so as to
never run out of food… You also need to take into consideration the available
space in your pockets, backpack, etc. A surprisingly complex game for such a
simple style, and I really like it – even if I’m nowhere near close to
surviving 24 hours in that world. Best I did was, like, 4 hours. And I’m going
to try again as soon as I can.
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