Post-Mortem Steam Winter Sale Reviews Part II

As always: these reviews reflect exactly as much time as I needed to understand what a horrible mistake I had made. I am curious is Steam gets mad at all of my refund requests....

Blood & Bacon

A farmer impaled on the wall of his barn hires a skeleton to take out an army of invading mutant swine. It's notable for being a one-man effort, and I suppose it's also notable for being "one of those Steam games"....which is to say, one of that endless horde of garbage that makes browsing for good stuff on Steam such a laborious chore these days....but with the caveat that a lot of people seem to like this game. In defense of B&B it is playable, and can be fun if you like Serious Sam and classic Duke Nukem type stuff....I guess.....but honestly? I am about 32 years too old to play this crap.
Verdict: I paid 99 cents for this and I want my money back, but I can never recover from the shame of having bought it in the first place.

Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex

Twitchy free to play shooter that no doubt has some insidious buy to win mechanic behind it, but I wouldn't know because the herky-jerky FPS controls and constant brutal sniper shots to the head left me less than interested in pursuing this one. I'm not even sure it's worth investigating for anime fans of Ghost in the Shell.....at best it's what you stick your teenage son on to keep him occupied (just make sure he doesn't have your CC number handy).
Verdict: nothing gained, nothing lost. I now return to the much, much better Warframe.

Shadows Peak

A lot of effort was put into making a spooky island with a weird mystery for you to explore in this combination puzzle/atmospheric horror/walking simulator but somehow it all falls flat and in the end feels neither spooky, nor puzzling nor horrific.....just annoying.
Verdict: the nice graphics don't make up fore the subpar experience. 35MM was actually a better game for contrast.

Salt

Of the four games in this round of "What Steam Regurgitated This Sale" Salt is the most palatable, and I am both keeping it and planning to play it more soon. The simple but effective graphics work well, as you play a stranded sailor on an island who must fix a raft and start exploring one island after the next. You find interesting written pieces of the tales of those who came before, implying a more interesting story to be found. It's main fault is that it's a bit slow (to start, so far) but I can see the promise.
Verdict: not bad for yet another permanent Early Release survival game. I plan to continue exploring this one.

Post-Mayan Non-Apocalyptic Blog Day

Okay, it's a week late but I just wanted to say, "hey, look, that was a whole lot of nothing. Hope some film makers and book writers got a decent profit out of that one." So I guess the next big event...which ironically is actually something worth noting, unlike the entirely fictitious non-event we just breezed through, will be the 2037 near-miss from asteroid Apophis. I predict many more book and movie deals in the future, culminating in a more interesting level of mass hysteria if the History Channel gets lucky.

I've taken a break from blogging for the last week or so. In a nice change of pace I've been relaxing at home, but that's only half true; it's been a bear of a week at my place of employment as I do an office move, which has been an interesting and time-consuming task, with a lot of overtime in the mix. Hopefully by next week things will be back on track, though.

I did manage two minor accomplishments this week: I watched the movie Salt, and I finally got finishing achievements on all campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2. I don't feel a lot of compulsion to continue playing L4D2, which means I need to find a new game to play for the Holidays (it's been a tradition now for a couple years that I played marathon L4D and L4D2 campaigns during all major holidays). Hmmm....I think I might start focusing more on Arma II soon (although I am still holding off on Day Z until the official edition comes out next year).



I also watched Salt, the Angelina Jolie action film from a year or two back. It was actually a lot of fun, and I got to see the extended edition, which means I have no idea what was cut from the theatrical release but it held together just fine. The film did an admirable job of focusing on a character (Evelina Salt) without necessarily giving away her character's motivations. It had a few "unpleasant" moments in it, the sort of stuff that European and Hong Kong cinema don't bat an eyelash at, but which most Summer time American audiences cringe over, so I wonder how well it did when it was fresh on the scene.

Anyway, it was a good movie, had fewer "suspension of disbelief being tested" moments than is normal for an Angelina Jolie movie, and a compelling narrative with more than a few plot twists. Worth watching if you are into action and espionage films.

Amidst all of this, I would like to thank my son, Marcus, for being such a good sport while dad tried to watch a movie, as he only made a mad dash to turn the TV off once, and otherwise played with his ball with dad, the cats, and anything he could bounce it off of for close to an hour and a half before mom arrived to put him to bed.