Spooky season has come and gone, and I didn’t play a single spooky game. I did watch the original Frankenstein though, so that was pretty cool!
Game Acquisitions
I claimed a ton of free itch.io games last month. Indie developers were giving away a bunch of horror games just like they did last year. Sometimes playing these low budget hour-long horror games is a good time. On another note, I bought a surprising number of games directly on Steam and spent down the rest of my wallet funds. The Steam Autumn Sale brought Sucker for Love: First Date down to a historical low and I already owned the sequel so why not? There was also a story-based game bundle with a discount for games I already owned which brought the rest down to a really good price. I’m especially excited for Until Then and Wander Stars from that bundle. The other big game was a Steam family purchase (read: free!) of Hades II. The same person also bought the first one a few months back that I still haven’t played, so now I get to play both of them! A very solid month for acquisitions.
# of Games: 96
Total Money Spent: $29.11
Price/Game: $0.30
# of Games YTD: 842
Total Money Spent YTD: $576.28
Price/Game: $0.68
Game Recaps
A limited selection of games last month due to not playing anything since the 23rd, with an unfortunate stinker in the mix. I was really looking forward to Crime Scene Cleaner based on the good reviews, but the monotony and bugs hampered my experience. I still beat Act One, which was the original ending, so I’ll take that as a win. On a much lighter note, BALL x PIT was enjoyable almost the whole way through, even if it was a little basic. I had two buddy hangouts in a row with Tales of Destiny sessions which is unheard of, so I made great progress there. We are currently in the phase of the game where you have to connect all the Aeropoleis locations together to reach Dycroft which is trying to destroy the planet from the sky. I think we’re closeish to the end. I then decided to let my Game Pass subscription lapse because they announced Final Fantasy VII Remake is coming to the service, but I still have three Final Fantasy games to play before that. That means I’m starting up the Final Fantasy train again with 4 Heroes of Light! This might be the game in the series I’m looking forward to the least, but the good news is I get to play the iconic VII afterwards. I can’t wait to see what all the fuss is about with that one. Check out my let’s plays for everything I played or uploaded in October. The first episode of Crime Scene Cleaner will be out January 4th and BALL x PIT on January 8th.
Game Reviews
Crime Scene Cleaner
I need to preface this review by mentioning that I experienced a couple semi-major bugs that hampered my enjoyment of the game. As such, I can only review what I experienced instead of how the game is meant to be played. With that out of the way, Crime Scene Cleaner is basically what you expect from the title. A crime has happened, there are dead bodies, bullet casings, and overturned furniture everywhere, and it’s your job to come in and clean it all up so there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing. If you’ve played Powerwash Simulator or Viscera Cleanup Detail, you know what to expect here. You have a garbage can to pick up and bag trash, a water bucket to clean the mop that has to be refilled every so often when it gets too bloody, a power washer, a sponge for when you don’t want to knock anything over, and detergent with various effects like stronger cleaning. I rarely used the power washer, sponge, or detergent and just stuck with the trusty mop for most of the levels.
One thing I believe Crime Scene Cleaner tries to do above other cleaning simulators is tell a story. It starts small by cleaning up a mess your friend made but quickly spirals to being recruited by the mob and using the money to pay for your daughter’s medical treatment. After each level, you return to your house to pet the dog and use the computer to accept missions and read emails from your daughter on how treatment is going. It’s not much, but I thought it was a nice touch. Some levels tell an increasingly chaotic story of how the gang is trying but failing to overthrow the mob boss you’re working for and you keep getting sent in to clean up their mess while others are just one-off situations gone bad. While I give props to the game for trying to tell a serious story, the stiff animations, mediocre voice acting, and out of place humor ruin it for me.
At first, I enjoyed making the crime scenes spotless. My OCD brain lit up whenever a room previously covered in blood, trash, and out of place furniture was restored to the way it should be. Seeing the mission results screen light up with 100% completion for finding all the evidence and cleaning every speck of dirt was immensely satisfying. This went on for the first handful of missions until I noticed that the gameplay wasn’t evolving in any way. I was still using the same mop and bucket cleaning up the same messes for increasingly larger and more complex areas. At the house, I opened up the menu to see that there were skill trees I could invest points into to unlock more efficient ways of cleaning. This is where the major bugs came in as I wasn’t able to click into any of the other skill trees, and the perks I bought in the only visible skill tree wouldn’t take effect and reset themselves whenever I was actually in a mission. I assume this is where the gameplay evolution was supposed to come from, but I had no way of seeing that first-hand. This made the later levels incredibly tedious to complete as I was going way slower than the game was designed to go at that point without any upgrades to aid me. I completed act one which was the original ending to the game and rolled credits. I played the first couple of missions of act two but was incredibly bored of doing the same thing for 17 hours at that point and dropped it there. It’s a shame, there were more bonus missions I didn’t do that probably would’ve been fun if I had the full arsenal of tools and upgrades at my disposal. I think you’ll still enjoy this game if you enjoy other similar cleaning simulators, just maybe wait for it to be patched if it hasn’t been already.
Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 17h:11m
Rating – 6/10
BALL x PIT
BALL x PIT is a roguelite game loosely based on the old arcade game Breakout with some city building elements. This may seem like a random mix of genres that make no sense to go together, and it is, but somehow BALL x PIT pulls it off very well. The main gameplay section has you blasting away at a horde of enemies that are slowly moving towards you using a variety of special balls. There is a huge variety of balls from basic damage dealers to lasers that attack every enemy in a column. Killed enemies drop experience orbs and once you have enough, you pick a new special ability or ball to add to your loadout. Balls can be upgraded, fused with other balls to combine effects, or even evolve two balls to create something entirely new. This leads to an insane number of combinations to try to make every run feel fresh. Every level includes two minibosses and a final boss as well as blueprints that can be used to construct new buildings or unlock characters back at your base.
City building is the other major gameplay feature of BALL x PIT. You start with a small plot of land with houses for the characters you’ve unlocked. You use money to expand the plot or buy resources such as wheat, wood, and rocks that can be harvested to construct new buildings. These buildings can house new characters, upgrade stats, or provide passive effects such as starting with higher level balls or increasing orb pickup distance. This is where the meta progression of roguelites kicks in as you slowly get stronger the more buildings you construct and upgrade. You get to choose where buildings and resources are placed and can harvest resources after every run. I imagine anybody who enjoys city builders will enjoy this section, and I found it fun enough, but it was becoming a little tedious for me as the number of buildings grew. I felt that my likely suboptimal layout prohibited me from getting later upgrades in a timely manner due to lack of resources, but I was still able to beat the game with what I was able to unlock anyway.
For the most part, BALL x PIT was a very fun time, if a little repetitive. Besides the short opening cinematic and one-off character descriptions, there is no story or lore in this game. The only goal is to beat each level with a set number of characters to upgrade the elevator to descend down the pit to the next level until all eight levels are beaten. I experienced one difficulty spike in the next to last level, but for the most part, it was smooth sailing. As with any good roguelite, finally getting the super powerful build through RNG upgrades and decimating the run was satisfying every time. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself is pretty basic and never really evolves past launching a bunch of balls at your enemies in a small arena with limited movement. Even with that limitation, I still enjoyed BALL x PIT for what it is and I think it accomplished what it set out to do. I can recommend this game to anyone looking for a roguelite that provides fun build synergies and isn’t put off by the admittedly shallow gameplay loop.
Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 23h:23m
Rating – 7.5/10
Stats
Despite only playing three games last month, two of them managed to hit my top 10 most played games this year. My co-op partner and I have been working on Tales of Destiny since May, so it makes sense that it’s finally made its way up this high on the list. BALL x PIT just barely squeaks ahead of Final Fantasy IV to be my tenth most played. If I manage to play through Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light and Final Fantasy VII before the end of the year, I imagine they’ll make the list as well. I had a great month for acquisitions as I said earlier. It was my second lowest spending month but my fourth highest amount of games. I can thank all the itch.io freebies for that. Looking at my hours played, I see I’ve now hit the fourth straight month of decline. If I played anything in the last week I could’ve easily overtaken September. It’s OK though, I’ve been busy planning my first international trip, messing with Playnite scripts, and researching the multitude of PC recompilation and VR mod projects that have exploded this year. I’m going to have so many VR games to play when I finally get a headset!
Conclusion/Upcoming
Definitely a slower month for me, but there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes. I’m excited to see what international travel is like, and it’ll be nice to take my first full week off work since starting at my job 10 years ago. I’ll just try to ignore the thousands of dollars I already spent booking everything 😅 Gaming really is one of the cheapest hobbies you can get into. Speaking of, I’m probably going to be holding off on playing anything for at least a few more days while I get more things set up. I recently discovered Geo 11 mods which turn basically any DirectX 9 and 11 games into stereoscopic 3D to be viewed in a VR headset. It even allegedly works for the PS1 and PS2 emulators so the number of VR games I’m planning on playing in VR will explode once again if I can get it working. After all that is set up, I’m finally going to jump into my next Final Fantasy game. I’m hoping 4 Heroes of Light isn’t as hard as I’ve read it can be. It’ll be my first 3D entry in the series which probably isn’t the best introduction, but I just gotta keep telling myself that it paves the way for VII, so it’ll all be worth it. My Game Pass subscription will likely stay on hold while I get through them. There’ll probably be another session or two of Tales of Destiny as well since we haven’t played for a few weeks and I think we’re in the final stretch. Anyway, that’s going to be all for me. Happy late Halloween! I hope you all remembered to set your clocks back if your country does that. Thanks for reading!
Backlog total: 4,820 (+120!)
