¡Recently, Abandoned; Games!

Kero Blaster hard mode

I greatly appreciate the effort put into the hard mode of this game, as even the stages are different. However, the further I got the more frustrating artificial difficulty got, like obscuring most of the screen in one stage so you can't see enemies. Stages are too long in my opinion so that you're thrown back too far after being game overed by a boss. Stage 7 ends in some sort of buss rush with multi-phase bosses, which you have to do all over again once you die, and then after a game over you're put back at the start of this very long stage again. Really not enjoying it anymore.

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye (DLC)

What a disappointment after the fantastic main game. I was put off early on by how all the flight/low-grav/zero-grav stuff is just removed entirely, because to me that was an essential part of the game. The amazing fuckery with quantum uncertainty is gone too, the signalscope isn't used, there's no reading alien scripture. And most of the time there's not even any soundtrack. It feels like half the game is removed.

Worse, the cycle timer resetting. It was a concern that the resetting cycle sounds like you just have to restart and go where you left all over again all the time, but in the main game I found that this wasn't an issue most of the time--very most of the time, I went somewhere else after a cycle reset so it didn't bother me. In the DLC however, I'm just returning to where I left all the fucking time. The cycle reset has changed from an interesting (if sometimes frustrating) gameplay mechanic to pure pointless frustration. It adds nothing whatsoever, it's just a nuisance.
There were a few times when I enjoyed my progress for a short while, but those moments were few and far between. That was the last straw, it just keeps piling up annoying shit, it's become so insufferable now that I quit.

I do think it's a love it hate it game, but I also think it gets better as you progress. Both narratively and from a gameplay perspective, so a mid-game sliced demo might have been better than an early game trial.

But it's absolutely not the revelation Witcher III or even Witcher 2 were, so yeah I can see it being disappointing to many.

The story goes places though, man. I dug it.

Blossom Tales is suppose to be very Zelda-like. Might be Switch only though

EGS free game backlog tryout abandons:

Creature in the Well

Top-down action game where you hit enemy projectiles with your sword to make them fly back and ricochet and stuff like in a pinball machine. Doesn't do anything for me tbh.

Dungeons 3

Dungeon Keeper clone. I'm certain it refines some mechanics compared to the original DK games, but to me it just doesn't have the gritty charm and humour that are so important for those. I don't know, it just doesn't feel as good. Humour-wise it goes for that sort of cutesy irony that is so ubiquitous in modern indie games, where they try to cram in as many self-aware jokes as possible, and tbh I'm tired of that. Also much more story-heavy than I'd like it to be.

Windbound

Colourful archipelago survival game which at first glance seemed interesting enough, but I got bored rather quickly. And I'm not into this kind of game in the first place, so whatever.

Hob

This seemed more interesting, possibly scratching that Zelda-style itch, and I played it for two hours or so. But the gameplay loop consists mostly of running around to find the next object to hit the interact button on, and what kills it for me is that it's so labyrinthian I spent most of the time trying to figure out where I'm supposed to go and running back and forth through the same areas again and again. The map isn't helpful and backtracking is a nightmare. It just kept getting more frustrating until I just stopped.

Barony

Dungeon crawler RPG (roguelike, I think) with first-person voxel graphics reminiscent of Minecraft style. Looked nice in videos, but gameplay felt so clunky I couldn't bear it.

Figment

Kind of Bastion in a Samorost-style surreal setting--which sounds good to me--but with very basic and boring combat, very unengaging and slow puzzles, and narrative and setting I didn't find any interesting either. Abandoned quickly.

Galactic Civilizations III

Long hesitated to give it a try because it's not my genre. Tried it anyway now, only to quickly learn the hard way this is really, really not my genre.


Also abandoned: Abzu, Absolute Drift, Totally Reliable Delivery Service, Yoku's Island Express

Yeah Yoku seems competent and I've heard many good things about it, but pinball stuff really does nothing for me, tried it anyway but quickly figured I'm not having any fun

More EGS freebie backlog

Jotun Valhalla Edition

Art style did nothing for me, movement and combat felt slow and clunky, the first type of enemy (tentacle coming out of the ground) was super boring and the stage just plastered the same enemy all over the place, which certainly didn't leave a good first impression. On top of that, the game started stuttering with a dozen of them on screen, which is just wild. I mean, it's a 2D game with a dozen of the same simplistic enemies on screen, and not even any parallax background or anything... how is this even possible?

Had a few goes at the first boss but as he grows in size his attack range became insane which only led to combat becoming increasingly slower and clunkier. Maybe there's a trick but I can't be bothered anymore. Received mixed reviews on Steam, so apparently I'm not alone.

Horizon Chase Turbo

Got raving reviews apparently, but for my liking this kind of game has aged terribly. And if I wanted to get this sort of retro fix, I'd play one of the 16-bit originals. And it'd probably be Road Rash instead of Out Run.

Tired of playing the same games over and over again. And sometimes there's something I didn't expect to like, like A Short Hike

Valhalla I guess. There was a free weekend to play it on Stadia, so I gave it a go. Really enjoyed Odyssey but had heard differing things about this. It looks really pretty, but playing a game based in the snowy wastes when you're too frightened to turn on the heating didn't work and I felt cold all the time I played it. It was cheerless (aside from the (miltiple) times they raised a horn of mead) and overly serious. I felt the protagonist was a bit of a dick who I didn't relate to (despite being something of a dick myself). There were pointless and intrusive mini games added and the skill tree actually did look like the old spider that had wandered through ink. I couldn't read it without serious zooming in and then I lost sight of the rest of it.

The raids felt like COD as I had brainless companions fighting against infinite enemies all waiting for me to open the next "thing" and all mostly ignoring my existence. The lack of stealth options was irritating and the slaughtering infinite bad guys did nothing for me... neither did the boss fights where I seemed to be getting my ass kicked just before I won. Not sure what I was doing, but for the first three quarters of any fight I was doing hardly any damage and then RIP Bad Guy. I'm not a great fan of "boss fights" with their arenas tbh.

Then there were chests and the way they are hidden inside houses with no doors and windows. "Apparently" you're supposed to find a nearby tunnel or destroy a particular spot of the roof with an arrow or something. I know I spent 15 minutes running around one longhouse whacking everything I could and climbing up everything I could as it had "something" inside it. I shouldn't need to google what to do in order to get into a house. Oh and that reminds me, my hero runs like a little old lady, all hunched up and in slow motion. I think its supposed to look heroic or something, but its doesn't work for me and neither did the long boat which felt tiny and insubstantial but which seemed to store dozens of Vikings when we landed anywhere.

Bits I liked: scenery which was pretty (but cold), Odin, (though I didn't notice him first time he appeared) and the assassins. First time I've ever played 60fps as well and I see what people mean about it now it just seems so much more fluid. Harald seemed cool...or at least like he had more than one brain cell.

Bits I didn't like: Pretty much everything else. The mini game hawking really got on my nerves. It was like going through a bazaar in Morocco with everyone hassling you. I couldn't make Eivor look nice to my eyes with the options given either. Couldn't see the point of all the body tattoos either. The fighting wasn't fluid like in Odyssey and I didn't feel at all heroic. I died about a dozen times in my first 30 minutes or so. Oh and the raven was crap. It no longer tagged enemies or gave any details on them, just flew over really high up.

Its a shame. I've only played Black Flag (struggling with the ship combat) and Odyssey before this and I enjoyed them both. This not at all and that's before I get to slaughtering people in monasteries. Oh and I know there are "gore off" options, but I'm not sure they needed the gore on in the first place. Seemed a bit much at times.

TLDR: not for me thanks.

Finished Xenosaga 1 and 2 and they're very ponderous and cutscene heavy. From what I remember it's like that all the way through, although the games change a fair bit in terms of gameplay and feel I think. I either got burnt out or just didn't like the third one so didn't finish it. Remember there being some properly epic parts though

Did they not censor those out?
I recall neckbeards at the time getting mad about some censorship regarding Momo.

Not just me then! I love arcade racers but I hated HCT. Particularly the jarring stop dead in your tracks after hitting the back of an unavoidable car. If that wasn't bad enough it's very frequent

I know I am. It's a combination of me having less time, and also an increasing conviction that most of the "content" in open world games is a waste of that dwindling time. Just base level "we are pulling levers in your brain to give you that sweet dopamine hit" kind of stuff.

Sometimes I'm in the mood for mindless icon cleaning, but more often I bounce off them in 20 hours or so. And it even infects games that I otherwise like (see Horizon: Zero Dawn).

But I loved RDR2, and so far Elden Ring is great. Absolutely love exploring that world, and it rarely feels like I'm wasting my time.