As I expected, it took me an hour or so last night, flipping through the
demos on Steam, to pick half a dozen from this
Autumn's Next Fest to play and review And as I also expected, it was a less intuitive and
user-friendly experience than it could have been. It's not that the search and
sort options aren't there, or that they don't work, so much as it's the way so
many games are tagged with so many genres and styles it renders the process of sifting through them opaque.
I started by looking through the demos Steam had dumped into my Discover queue. There's a warning that says it takes Steam a couple of days to learn about the games before it can personalize the selection for individual users but if I waited until 18.00 on Wednesday for that to happen, I wouldn't have time to play the damn demos.
Even without personalization, the Discovery queue seemed pretty well-tuned to my interests, although checking it again this morning, that seems to have been sheer good luck. I picked a couple from there, anyway. Or I think I did. I can't honestly remember. After you've looked at a few dozen demos it all becomes a bit of a blur...
After I'd done that, I stopped to have a think about what sort of games I'd like to play and what I might like to write about. And guess what? It was all the same ones as usual. Sorry about that. I know these demo review posts are some of the least-read pages on the entire blog - even the music posts reliably outperform them - but I enjoy writing them, so...
The genres I looked at specifically this time were Point&Click, MMORPG, Visual Novel and Turn-Based Strategy. The only sub-genre I looked at was Tactical RPG. This time I didn't try parsing anything by Themes & Moods. Usually I at least throw Cyberpunk in there but I'm a bit cyberpunked out at the moment.
Oh, wait, actually that's not quite true. I did search 1980s for some reason. Just to see what was there, really. And I ended up picking something, too.
There seemed to be plenty to choose from in all my selections, although too high a proportion in some categories seemed to me to have not all that much to do with the genre they claimed to be part of. I did notice there were a lot more MMORPGs than usual, which I found surprising.
There were a couple of very unusual MMOs in the list, too. I'd almost call them original. There's a platforming MMO, certainly the first I've ever heard of, called Springtale. It's a roguelite, too, so god knows how that works in an MMO context.
I'm very bad at platformers so I didn't even consider that one but I did have a long think about Band Stage, a music game where you play instruments and perform, either solo or with a band, which apparently you can form with other players, like a group in an MMO. Again, I'm very bad at music games, so that would just be embarrassing for me and infuriating for anyone I was playing alongside. Plus the music in the trailer isn't doing an awful lot for me...
I could easily have picked all MMORPGs this time. There were plenty that looked interesting. The problem with MMO demos, when it comes to playing them for a Next Fest review, is that they take too long. Hours rather than minutes and even then it's often only enough to see the very early stages. Not exactly practical for my purposes.
In the end I chose three, two of which are creature collectors. I didn't actually realise that until after I'd chosen them and I might only have taken one if I had but it'll be interesting to compare them, I guess.
The third was ArcheAge Chronicles, which I'm not going to review for Next Fest. For a start, it's nearly 40gb and I'm not sure I want to download it just for a demo. More importantly, it's the sort of game I could perfectly well install and play outside of Next Fest and most likely will, whenever I have the time to give it a proper look.
Eight demos is probably two too many, anyway. Especially if they're any good. I'll stick to the following seven and leave AAC for later. Probably.
The seven I'm going to try and get through in the next week are listed in a little more detail below. I have now officially retired, so I have all my time to myself, and the weather forecast for the rest of the week is very poor, so I'll be indoors most of the time. Should be ideal!
The Other Side of the Wall - "
Julian Reed is a 13-year old student at a New England all-boys Catholic
boarding school in the early 1980s. When people begin disappearing and no
one else seems to remember they ever existed, Julian investigates, with the
help of a girl he has never seen, separated from him by a wall."
This is the one I found by searching "1980s". It's a Point & Click adventure and the promo video was what sold it for me. It starts with a shot of some dork in a baseball jacket dancing in the foreground while in the background another kid sits at a desk with his back to the action, writing a letter. A decent quality voice-over reads out what he's writing and I found it pretty funny, especially the bit about him having all the Police albums. After that it shows some classic point & click gameplay which made me feel right at home. I have high hopes for this one. The video is on YouTube but weirdly it doesn't have the voiceover there. Watch it on Steam for the full effect.
World of Slime - "
World of Slime is a casual MMORPG where you capture, collect, and grow with
all kinds of slimes. Find new slimes through field capture, synthesis, and
fishing, then take them with you into battles, exploration, and puzzles."
I knew of this one from MassivelyOP so it got a quick grab on recognition value. I think I might be regretting that, now I look at it more closely. Also, what is it with slimes? They are not cute, no matter how often people say they are.
Never Wither
- "
Experience unprecedented creature collection gameplay—Transform into almost
any creature you see! Collect and raise fantastical creatures, and command
them to farm, build, and craft. In this open world survival crafting game,
Establish your settlement, become the last hope against the Corruption."
This is the other creature collecting MMO I chose (Probably more properly categorised as open-world survival/crafting.) and it looks a lot more interesting. Graphically, it looks very attractive and the gameplay has survival elements including base-building. I'm getting Palworld vibes. Also, I like the name. It's just odd enough to be intriguing. The demo is the whole first zone of the full game and they estimate 3-5 hours gameplay, more if you try to see and do everything. Another I feel optimistic about.
The Brilliant Detective Milo
- "A narrative-driven cat detective game set some time during the 20th century
in a city rattled by the resurgence of mysterious murders. As head detective
of the Mew York Police Department, it is your duty to put a stop to these
killings and exhume the secrets buried deep in the shadows of the city…"
Cartoon cats, bad cat puns, comic strips... I wonder why I picked it? It looks great but the problem with detective games is I always think I'm going to enjoy them more than I do. I don't get on with those evidence boards and I'm just hopeless at figuring out who the murderer is. It's always a murderer, too, isn't it? It's never an arsonist or a blackmailer or a sheep rustler.
Hela: Of Mice and Magic - "
See the world through the eyes of a brave little mouse in this enchanting
3D co-op adventure. Explore breathtaking landscapes inspired by Northern
Sweden, solve puzzles, and be a force for good in a land where heartwarming
storytelling and the beauty of nature intertwine."
First cats, now mice. It says it's co-op but it can be played solo. I checked. Visually, it looks fantastic, to the point where I'm doubting whether it will even run on my machine. Of course I didn't check the minimum specs for any of the demos. Didn't even think of it. I might have to try re-installing the graphics card. If nothing else, this Next Fest is going to be a good test of whether I can trust this machine for gaming or if I really should think about getting a new one.
Et le Grain Mourut
- "A visual novel set in 1920s Paris. As summer draws near, young students are
revising their end-of-year exams. Olivier is one of them."
Hmm. I did French up to the first year of university but it was a loooong time ago. I think that means "And the grain died." Let me see if that's right. Ah, close! It's "And the dead grain." Which still tells me absolutely nothing.
It's a slightly strange demo in that it covers the first two days of the story and includes about 15% of the total text in the game but it doesn't include any "big branching paths", which is kind of the main gameplay in a visual novel. They do say you can still make some choices, though, which is just as well. Otherwise it would just be a cartoon.
Kat Domino: Agent of S.H.E.L.L.
- "Kat Domino is an agent of SHELL, the organization ruling the world. A
routine mission will lead her where she doesn't belong, uncover things she
was never meant to see, and unravel a conspiracy that could change
everything she thought she knew. With a little luck, her trainee agent will
survive"
Oh, look! Another cartoon cat! Who ever would have guessed?
This one has more lore on the store page than all the rest put together. Someone is really invested in the world-building here. And it sounds great. Which is more than I can say for the trailer. I recommend turning the sound down. I hope there's none of that in the game or the music will be going off right from the start. Other than that, hitting all the right notes!
And there we are. Now all I have to do is play them. And then write about them.
Off I go.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment