Resident Evil 3 (XSX Game Pass)

Another decent remake. It's not as good as RE 2 though, most people say that the original RE3 wasn't as good as well. The locations are not as good as the first game and, as the game goes on, you find more enemies grouped together in areas where they must be cleared- this makes the game more tedious than RE 2 as these groups take a lot of ammo or a lot of luck getting a critical head shot.

I found that in other RE games you can clear the important areas, like around the safe room, and other high travel areas and just run past the other enemies. This time I felt the need to pretty much put everything down for good, and that's easier said than done. This tended to occasionally entice me into a tedious sort of save scumming, where I'd run from the safe room and drop on enemy, then run back, save and repeat. Sometimes reloading if I felt that I used too much ammo. I never did this in RE 2.

Still, it's otherwise a high standard survival horror game. Not as good as RE2 Remake or RE 7 or RE 0 and 1 Remasters. About on par with RE 2 Revelations and infinitely better than RE 5 and 6.

Resident Evil HD Remaster for the first time took me slightly over 14 hours (with Jill). It is a must for entering into the series, but Resident Evil 0 was better in my opinion. Considering how easy is entering deadly situation here, I decided to use walkthrought to beat this game. Otherwise I would definitely give up, because there are many unfair situation which does not add to tension, but to anger… With walkthrough, it was much better, unfortunately game does not feel the right way. Comparing it to Silent Hill 4 were I was felling, that any moment can something happen, RE was more puzzle game, sometimes try, die and repeat. Hope, that second one will be better.

Aviators is good for a free game. Generally a little short, so nobody expected, that somebody could play it twice, it mean graphics configuration does not save… Content is a little bit of history and little bit of propaganda. Understand, that in current times somebody thought, it could be useful. For short time relax, it is recomendable.

Was recommended Hardspace: Shipbreaker by a friend and it turned out that I could play it through my PS Plus subscription on PS5. I didn't think I would beat the whole thing but by the time I got sick of the game I was already too far down the rabbit hole and ended up not only beating it but also getting a platinum trophy (which does not take much extra effort in this game).

It's a game I had seen many times while browsing through Steam but it never really caught my attention because it just blended together with all the other job simulators and "engineering" games out there. I assumed it would just be your average cheap indie sandbox game with a clever idea and little else but there's actually a really fancy pre-rendered intro, a surprisingly developed narrative as well as satire and serious (if a bit naive) social commentary. And the game boasts a really good and oddly fitting country / blues soundtrack that ties down that whole blue collar angle. Cool!

For the first couple of hours I also found the gameplay to be pretty cool and refreshing. It's certainly in an entirely different league than all those job simulator games that have you fix up cars and whatnot. Yes, you do perform pretty basic tasks as all you do is basically cut up ships and send the pieces into one of three types of container but it also isn't entirely trivial because if you don't pay attention you can get crushed, burned, electrified, frozen and probably a few other things. Over time you get a few more tools and the ships you have to take apart get extended by more complex machinery that has a tendency to kill you and/or destroy the ship if you do things in the wrong order or e.g. accidentally hit it while cutting. So even though you're stuck in this repetitive loop of cutting, grabbing and pushing or slinging stuff, you do have to memorize a few important patterns.

But sadly that's also just it: it's really just about memorizing a few patterns - there's no strategizing or substantial problem-solving here. While the game is in theory a bit systemic it's in practice entirely content-driven and it sadly runs out of content MUCH more quickly than you will reach the end of the story. For several hours you will be receiving a few new tools and facing new challenges, e.g. reactors which need to be salvaged carefully but quickly so they don't explode from a meltdown. There's practically just a handful of these things here, though. So in practice Hardspace is actually a lot more similar to those bargain bin job simulators than engineering games, even though it kinda promises to be the latter.

Over the course of the campaign you will have to dismantle perhaps several dozen ships, most of which will take about 45 minutes each to complete and honestly, as soon as all the unique elements have been introduced all ships just feel the same and Hardspace becomes one of those games that make you feel how you're aging and slowly crumbling to dust as you're playing them.

And the game pretends that there's a lot more to it than there is. There's a lot of talk about how much your performance matters but it frankly doesn't. There's a money economy but it's basically fake. You start with a crapload of debt and one of your main goals is to clear it but the money is otherwise completely irrelevant and most of that debt is erased by story progress anyway. You also have experience, which levels you up and also advances the story, as well as skill points that you use to unlock upgrades. The problem: the upgrades suck. The best upgrades significantly reduce a lot of the hassle that the game actively throws at you (like having to replenish oxygen several times in a 15 minute shift) but none of them really unlock new opportunities. And heck, even the final tool you get (explosive charges) barely differs from your basic cutting tool mechanically and is more awkward to use. Also, the only actual reason to disassemble ships carefully is that it speeds up how quickly you get skill points. You can farm money and experience a lot more quickly just by focusing on some valuable components and moving on to the next ship.

So, as someone who really despises games that don't respect the player's time I do not respect this game. I get that there are players who enjoy the game's casual zen-like nature and will gladly play it for hundreds of hours but those guys can keep playing the game after finishing the story. I loathe how much mindless repetitive grinding you have to do in order to get to that point.

Finally, the PS5 port is pretty lazy. It makes no use of any of the DualSense controller's features, load times are meh and the game is basically locked at 30 FPS. There is a performance mode but that one suffers from an unbearable stutter that I haven't seen in any other game. And to add insult to injury the console version uses a radial menu with four slots for equipment even though there are only three pieces of equipment in the game - one slot will remain empty forever. Jesus.

Anyway, as a job simulator that you sometimes launch for 15-30 minutes to relax, the game is really good. But as an actual game with a campaign and a narrative experience it's a kick in the nuts.

Laura Bow: Colonel's Bequest

Another cliched little adventure game, this time about a dame at her best friend's uncle's murder mansio....home after he announces his will contents. The obvious occurs as bodies hit the floor faster than a Drowning Pool music video. Collect clues, try to figure it all out, spy on people chatting (and sometimes undressing o.0)....and most of all: survive


Pros

Nice retro graphics
Amusing cast of characters
Has nice clue-esque vibes
Decent Sound

Cons

One has to use arrow keys to walk
(there is also mouse control but it's not the best)

Typing to ask/tell people stuff
(gets annoying after awhile)

Easy to Miss optional actions/areas needed to get full score

Misc

I would've given the game a slightly lower score due to some of the cons, but the
setting/theme/characters/story helped make up for some of that(and my frustration at times) :)

-------------

Overall Score: 7/10
Well worth a quick play if one is into stuff similar to clue
and can handle the quirks of older adventure games.

Close to the Sun, Feb 18 (Xbox Game Pass)-It plays like budget mix of Bioshock and Soma. It looks and sounds excellent with the exception of the character models (especially the ones still alive and moving around) and the blue mist. The game was best in the first third or so when you're exploring a creepy, seemingly abandoned ship but by the time they introduce the monsters the atmosphere has lost its edge. The puzzles were very basic or non-existent. The chase sequences weren't great and they probably could have cut the number in half. Movement and interacting with objects was slow and janky but that might have been a deliberate choice because of the horror aspect. There was some occasional graphical stuttering, some switches that wouldn't switch when pressed the first couple of times, and at least one occasional when a random character tried to run thru a wall. Overall if you go in with tempered expectations you can still have a good time but its not going to wow very many people.

Full List

The obvious examples are games that are both, in terms of gameplay and also thematically about engineering and there's actually a TON of those at this point. I haven't played Kerbal myself but from what I know it is absolutely an example of an engineering game. Other examples that come to mind are the Zachtronics games (like SpaceChem, Infinifactory, Shenzhen I/O, TIS-100, Exapunks and Opus Magnum), Space Engineers, Factorio, Satisfactory, Besiege and so on. Earlier simpler examples are all those bridge building games (like the freeware classic Bridge Builder) and if you go even further you also have stuff like The Incredible Machine.

I think the boundaries of what constitutes an "engineering game" are pretty soft, though and some titles walk a very thin line. To me engineering games are generally games where you solve problems by constructing or assembling (or maybe also disassembling) stuff in an open-ended and usually complex system. They differ from puzzle games in that you don't have to find the solution but you have to figure out a ruleset and creatively develop a solution within those confines. Goals and challenges may not even be strictly necessary in an engineering game besides the ones that a player can impose on themselves.

I think it's essential to engineering games, though, that the system within which you do the construction is the focus of the game and can be challenging and engaging to work with without any grander gameplay layers (like e.g. a business layer or a strategic layer with human or AI opponents). That's why I would not recognize most city builders, games about logistics (like Transport Tycoon) or survival games (like maybe Valheim) as an engineering game even though they do tend to have a strong engineering aspect.

And then there's of course Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which has squeezed full on engineering gameplay into an open world action adventure and made engineering its main appeal and I'm leaving it to the philosophers to figure out what to do with that one.

Ok I haven't played those with the exception of Bridge Builder or something like it and The Incredible Machine. Was also thinking of TOTK based on several headlines I've seen. World of Goo was standing out to me as well.

Yeah, I suppose World of Goo is one of the simplest and most casual examples of an engineering game, as are Incredipede and Crayon Physics. And I haven't played it yet but apparently Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is another relatively early example that was a bit ahead of its time. For some of these games the line between engineering and puzzle game clearly becomes pretty thin.

Anyway, it seems we have the same idea. :)

Xargon. One of Epic's early games, it's essentially Jill of the Jungle with a guy who emits "laser bullets" from his navel. I think the idea is that you're using a laser gun, but they just didn't draw the sprite holding anything. There's a somewhat Edgar Rice Burroughs-ish concept where you're controlling an anthropologist who's transported to another world and you have to defeat Xargon, the big bad guy. You run and jump through levels while shooting enemies that tend to be slow-moving and easy to get the drop on - the game doesn't really start to get challenging until the third episode and even then most of the challenge comes from instant death falls. You can also buy extra health and power-ups from a store whenever you want, assuming you have the gems to afford stuff. For the most part, patience is the key. As long as you don't rush through stuff, you can breeze through most of the way.

The graphics are appealing in that classic SVGA kind of way, and the sound effects are very similar to the stuff from the Jill games. It does slow down when too many things are on-screen at once, though. I've been having a really lousy week and needed something simple and relaxing to play, and this did the job.

Calico

I got it for free at some point and gave it a try now, expecting that it wouldn't be my cup of tea at all. For one, it gives off some rather weird and creepy vibes that make it hard to tell who it was made for. And it's extremely glitchy and rough around the edges. I heard that fans even asked the devs not to fix this; I guess they get some kind of Goat Simulator kick out off all the odd jiggly buggy ragdoll jankiness, and sure, it can be funny if you're caught by surprise, but from a commercial game that's supposed to be cute, not uncanny by design, I would have expected more polish. The gameplay is very simple; quests are mostly just follow what you're told, put this here, go there and come back again, and even in the confusing mini-games about baking, where you're actually a mini version of yourself, the only challenge is to grasp what you're supposed to do (and sometimes why it doesn't work as it should). You can collect animals and animal toys, decorate your café with purchased furniture and dress up your character. None of that really matters all that much, it's just supposed to be casual and relaxing (but isn't always, due to the bugs).

That being said, for some reason I couldn't stop playing it. I meant to just give it a quick look and ended up completing it within three days. And I had fun while doing so. I think the pretty nice soundtrack had a big part in that, I also enjoyed moving around in the world, and some of the "potion" abilities you get are great fun (sadly, the best ones, as usual, you only get when the game is almost over already). Plus, there are a red panda and a llama in the game among other cool animals, so you don't really need to build a cat and dog café, if you don't want to. Occasionally an idea was so weird and quirky that it almost made me chuckle. And who knows, maybe it was exactly what I wanted, a short casual game with relaxing atmosphere, where I could just do what I like without stress, time limits and punishment. One of my favorite aspects was jumping off mountains as a shortcut, without any kind of fall damage.

So, all in all, I still think it's a little creepy, simplistic and less polished than it ought to be, but it grew on me. It wasn't long, and it had several things to offer that I liked, so that it even managed to remind me of some cozy games I love. I don't love this one, but it was nice enough, especially for free, and it didn't overstay its welcome.

SIGIL (Doom) is nice addition released for 25th anniversary. Last level was relatively challenging, but all of them were interesting. It is nice to see, that old games still get some care.

SIGIL 2 (Doom) reminds me more Heretic, than Doom. Levels are generally more demanding, whole game is a challenge. It takes some time to accustom to new rules, but then it is great!

Pikuniku

Simple, funny and short metroidvania-lite-lite game with casual difficulty. I had started it before and didn't feel like continuing it for some reason, but maybe it just wasn't the right time. Gave it another try now and I loved it. Especially the kicking, it never gets old. Neat mix of gameplay elements, too. Mostly platforming, but there are even some puzzles and a vent crawling 'stealth' section, heh, plus bosses even *I* managed to defeat without issues (though they're still a bit boring, but not as annoying as in other games). Good game if you just want to wind down for a bit and have a laugh.