2014 Play Log - Blowing Off Steam, Deader Space, and Shutting Down 2014

Okay, first off, this is NOT a condemnation of Steam. I am very happy with the service and use it for nearly all my PC gaming. (The only thing I get a little worried about is having an inventory of nearly 900 games that are dependent on a single login!) What I'm doing here is listing games that, while they sounded good and the price was attractive, just didn't work for me. Hey, it can happen with any game, but there is a certain permanence when it happens with a digital download game - in short, I'm stuck with it.

 Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage - This is a cheap, stand-alone expansion of what could best be called a janitorial simulator. Your "job" in this "game" is to cleanup Santa's workshop after he's gone "postal" and murdered all the elves. The concept of this - lots of Christmas gore - was a lot more interesting before I started to play it. Cleaning up even elf body parts just isn't fun.

 7 Days to Die - I'll cut this one a bit more slack as it's in Early Access, but still my initial playtime with it, while short, just consisted of running away from zombies, checking junked cars and trash for items, and then dying. It's got to be deeper that that, right?

 Paranautical Activity - I bought this before the developer decided to do something really dumb (ie, threaten to kill the head of Steam, Gabe Newell) even if everyone knew he was kidding. Well, ya know, the fact that you can't buy this game on Steam anymore is exactly no one's loss. It's low-res crap, to be honest, and a complete waste of time. Sorry, guys.

 Transistor - I probably shouldn't have bought a game from the same company whose first game I didn't like, but I was never known to be particularly bright. Yeah, I didn't like Bastion, and guess what? I don't like Transistor either. Not as annoying (the narrator is less "hip"), but the combat mechanic isn't anything I want to learn how to do well.

 8BitBoy - To the developer: Congratulations, you made a game as a tribute to your fond memories of the "good old days" of video gaming. Not bad, but we could have done without the depressed gamer/Tron rip-off at the beginning. Also, it's just another platformer.

Changing gears at this point, I was looking at a "25 Greatest Sci-Fi Games of All Time" article and came across Dead Space at a respectable number 10. This got me to thinking about how much I enjoyed it and wondering why I hadn't tried the sequel yet. So, as I have it in probably 3 different locations (PS3, Steam, Origins), I decided to blast off into another horror adventure.

 Dead Space 2 - This is one of those sequels where you can really benefit from playing the original. I was only about 30 minutes into the game and I was already using my plasma cutter, the stasis effect power, directional beacon, and kinesis grab, while chopping up necromorphs into bloody chunks and stomping on crates - all stuff I was doing during the first game. There was little to no introduction to these mechanics for anyone who didn't play the first one. (The graphics look sharper, I will admit, but I don't feel the sense of scale that the I did in #1.) I can't really complain about the sameness, I guess since this is, you know, the sequel! I did find the following "tip" to be amusing.

And so, this another year comes to a close. I'll need to go over all my posts from 2014 - the first year I've documented all my gaming experiences. It will be interesting to see if it was worth the effort and what I will consider to be the highs and lows. In the meantime, I'm wrapping up the year with some tablet and portable gaming due to some family time. But time away from the consoles and computer is hardly a bad thing.