155 was possible a few times last Saturday.  

The Gunk - Xbox Series S (5-6hrs)

What constitutes a bad game, in the modern era?  It's a question I've been pondering since the first couple of hours of this, and I've decided it has enough unpolished turds under the duvet to classify.  To clarify, it doesn't really shit the bed at any one point, it persistently craps itself from start to finish.    

My Image & Form credentials: I was late to the party with the Steamworld games, having owned the first one for a couple of years on PS+ before plucking up the courage to play it (despite the general praise).  The procedurally generated environments put me off, along with the how low can you go shtick - I just didn't think I'd enjoy it.  As it turns out it helped me cut my teeth of the roguelike genre (lower those tomatoes genre nerds; the rougeness is so lite it probably doesn't really qualify, but it shares similarities with procgen perma-upgrade die-and-lose-swag games and cracked the door open for me).  I eventually played it on Vita and I loved it.  I played Heist next, which would probably one of the first 20 on my teamsheet in Cinty's Top 100 thread.  There are deeper tactics on offer elsewhere, but aiming and shooting never got old, and it absolutely nailed what I'd probably refer to as arcade tactics.  Steamworld Dig 2 was a lovely big fat [8] and Quest was a decent enough My First Deck Builder (oh look, I've already repeated myself loads this review and contradicted myself with the order I played them, classic Moot).

So I was looking forward to The Gunk since it was announced.  Jon's review was a slap in the face, but other sources seemed to quite like it so although expectations were tempered I remained optimistic.  Unfortunately I disliked it more than most, and having made it to the credits I now think Mr. B's score was uncharacteristically generous.  There was literally nothing about it that felt any better than average for me, and quite a few aspects that were well below par - to the point where they would've been unimpressive over a decade ago.  Replace the okay visuals with anything from late era Oldbox to mid 360 gen and it could easily be a retro title in disguise.  Games that sprung to mind while playing were Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Beyond Good and Evil and Enslaved, but mainly in a 'this is worse than all of those' kind of way.  Granted, if this had been an Xbox game it would've been very good, but times have changed with 3D adventure games and the robustness of mustard has evolved alongside it - and this doesn't cut it.  Firstly, gunk clearing is dull and unfulfilling, somewhere between rummaging a finger around an empty nostril and trying to suck up a wet cornflake with a half blocked Henry.  Imagine Luigi's Mansion, but replace the cast of mischievous ghosts desperate to avoid capture with floating hemorrhoids that either sit still or pottle around a prescribed course.  Hoovering up the gunk is slooooow until you upgrade your equipment, then for the rest of the game it's just slow.  Controls are poor, mainly because it's stuck in the aforementioned generation straddling limbo.  It's painfully obvious this is I&F's first 3D game.  You'll get snagged on scenery, stuck in plants and slide awkwardly down rocks you shouldn't be climbing on.  Combat is genuinely awful too (especially trying to avoid the creatures that charge you later on) and everything from aiming projectiles to jumping on ledges just feels slightly annoying.  Even the secrets are irritating.  Games like God of War (2018) did a great job of encouraging the player to search for hidden booty, this just made me grumble whenever I realised I wasn't on the critical path.  It even loads areas like a 360 game, presenting you with an image of your character running on the spot.  I feel like Im building up a head of steam here, so I'll stop soon, but the Game Over screen is wank too, as you don't even seem to die, it just abruptly fades to black with someone shouting Snaaake! whatever your name is.  The Columbo complaint: subtitles during action sequences is always a faux pas in my book.  What am I supposed to do, stand still and read the translated alien dialogue or play the fucking game?


Savage Planet.

Yes to all that, especially the flow state.

Interesting sounding game for sure but I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

141. Cruis'n Blast - Switch (2hrs)

Did not enjoy this, nor would I have been impressed with it on Dreamcast.  It's an okay drift & nitro arcade racer with long courses rather than laps, ker-azy vehicle unlocks and a theme tune with vocals.  When I worked in Game this would've eventually sat on the £9.99 spinny spindle alongside the likes of 4 Wheel Thunder, Speed Devils, Vigilante 8: 2nd Offence and Loony Tunes Space Race.  It runs smoothly and doesn't play badly, but the cars/dinosaurs/robot stream trains don't handle particularly well either - it's all feels like a bit of an only worth one go arcade game, because of course that's precisely what it originally was.  

I don't think I'm being a grump here - I was willing to give this a good shot as arcade racers used to be my jam - but I can't go any higher than a [5].  The tour mode works in split screen two player mode, which pushed it up to a 5.4.  It's the sort of thing that would've had a terrible double page advert in American games mags from the late 90s.  Possibly with a grey grandad in a shirt and tie playing other racing games in black & white, while hip & happening full-colour grannies play split screen Cruis'n Blast on an adjacent page even though their eyeballs have spontaneously combusted. 

Ha, was just an example from the [4] to [7] ballpark of ten a penny DC racers. I didn't want to use Exhibition of Speed or Le Mans because they over-stretched the distance between the bookends and my point would've vanished.

I think Horizon Chase Turbo is my second most played Switch racer, but that was partly because it dragged on forever.

143. Legendary Eleven - Switch

One of the many budget football games that has often called to me in sales, only for a louder voice to shout 'it'll be shit!'.  This time the price was chipped all the way down to 89p, so an even louder voice popped up with 'how bad can it be?'.  And thus, on a wet Wednesday in South East London, my journey began.  

Upon firing it up I was presented with three options - Championship Mode, Legendary Matches and Friendly Game.  After a quick look at the legendary mode (which seems to recreate historic matches with specific parameters for victory) I decided I wanted to bring the world cup home to the good people of England.  A quick butchers at the dressing room revealed that my squad consisted of 17 staunch vinderlooers.  I haven't played anything like this for years, so at the very least I was expecting a cheeky approximation of existing players, The Shinning style, but instead it seemed to be rolling with big beano-to-Margate energy.  In no particular order, I would be relying on the very particular skillsets of Trevor, Steve, Paul, Chris, Bryan, Terry, David, Neil, Stevie P, Gary (DF), Peter, Gary (FW), Anthony, Carl, Dave, John and Mark to deliver the goods.  You have to adapt your style to fit the players, Ralph Rangnick once said, and Romania were about to get multiple stiff upper lips right up 'em.  Disclaimer - I failed to score for the first two games, so restarted the road to victory twice after learning most of the buttons.  A tutorial wouldn't have gone amiss.  Romania eventually made way for Germany, aka THE BIG ONE.  By that point I'd realised that shooting from a slight angle in the box invariably resulted in a goal, so I breezed past them 3-0.  Oddly, after two group stage games Germany had 6 points, despite MOTM Steve sinking them with two torpedoes in the second match, but justice was served as they lost to Brazil in the quarters anyway.  Long story short: after topping the group I swatted Czechoslovakia, fought back from two goals down against France in a fully tumescent 3-2 semi, and cheated by reloading my save at least four times to beat a surprisingly up for it Netherlands in the final.  Despite the game not being particularly good, this was the point where I realised I needed to play more dodgy football games, so immediately hit the EShop in search of deals.  

Some information on the game itself: It's functional, to an extent.  It's not a good game by any stretch of the imagination, but with two players I expect it'd be good clean throwaway laughing-at-and-with-it fun.  You have to wind up to shoot by holding the button, which can't be changed to the proper Pro Evo configuration of square rather than circle (or whatever the Switch equivalent is), which is irritating as you'll often be dispossessed while generating enough power for a non pea-roller.  The standing tackle - or pickpocket button as it's possibly known - could be accurately described as the central mechanic as there's plenty of tedious possession swapping with grunts and stumbles.  You pretty much can't tap anything in because of the wind up delay/responsiveness issues, which is also annoying as the keepers usually spill everything, so it becomes a game of through balls creating enough space to unleash a shot.  Crosses aren't totally useless as pressing shoot while under a dropping ball will occasionally trigger a bicycle kick, plus there's a run button and a few skills that felt a bit too fancy-Dan for Trevor & co, so it sort of plays like a functional football game.  It also has weird super moves that seem to occur at random and pretty much always result in a goal, which is just silly (especially if the AI unleash one with their first foray forward).  Overall then, a poor effort, but one that isn't totally without merit.  It's quite satisfying to score, which helps earn it a well fought [4].



144. Football Cup 2021 - Switch

Before embarking on this particular project I asked myself the question 'how bad can they be?', but I wasn't prepared for the answer to be 'worse than you could possibly imagine'.  This one is currently £1.34, and from the EShop video appeared to be going for the aborted Dreamcast prototype look.  Until a ball was kicked I genuinely thought this might be a step up from Legendary Eleven.  My robust group of Englanders for this mission were E. Thompson, C. Harris, P. Wilson, G. Anderson, D. Thompson, R. Davis, M. Taylor, W. Thomas, P. Taylor, W. Johnson and K. Moore (C).  Could I guide a team that included a Scottish DJ, a Scottish darts player, a decathlete, a retired journeyman with 317 appearances for Stoke, two famous guitarists, another darts player and him off of Genevieve to victory in the name of St. George?  Of course I could; the actual footballing is so broken even the AI couldn't work out how to score.  Plus this one saved between matches too.

A few thoughts on the game itself: The first thing the opposition team did was boot it out of play, which set the tone really.  When I took the resulting throw in (aiming at no-one from zero options, because none of my players moved remotely close to the ball) it treated me to the 'kicks ball' sound effect as it left Ray Davis' hands, which reiterated the tone.  Player movement is beyond bizarre, as you have to steer them in curves due to their tank-like turning circles.  At first I thought it was impossible to score as the keepers saved everything, but it turned out luring them towards you in the box and then attempting a pass did the trick on the rare occasion someone managed to latch onto it.  Using this method I progressed through the group stages - playing everyone twice for some reason, win or draw - through to the quarters and semis (again, playing everyone twice) and then on to the one-shot final against Italy before basking in the glory of the special cup lifting animation.  Some oddities I noticed along the way: the game gives zero fucks about sending opposing teams out in identical kits, there is no extra time and the penalties are designed to troll you.  

Shoot-out agony for Tilly:



In-game achievements occasionally pop up at the top of the screen, and they're all for things like 'performed five throw ons' or 'performed ten throw ons'.  There's literally no way I can accurately emphasise how awful everything is without handing you a pad to confirm it for yourself, but trust me, it's all the way bad.  [1]  On the plus side, [Peter Cunnah voice] things can only get better. 

145. League of Champions Soccer - Switch

[Hugh Grant Four Weddings best man speech voice] Or so I thought.  This is it ladies and gentlemen, all things considered the the actual worst game I've ever played.  Most of the forum thinks I play shit games anyway, and I've had theme days with mates where we'd deliberately play the worst games from various eras, but this would nonchalantly wrestle the wooden spoon from anything ever.  By this point I was so addicted to the quest for glory I paid £2.99 for it, triple my previously planned ballpark budget (NB: it's currently in the sale, so £3 is HALF PRICE).  Firstly, I couldn't pick England as this one offers club football only.  After much deliberation as Manchester United (or an approximation of) obviously weren't invited to the League of Champions whenever this came out, I settled on Barcelona before spending ages working out how to start the cup competition.  I wasn't sure what was going on for a while, but eventually twigged that pressing the pause button soft resets the game.  As the whistle blew for the first match I belatedly realised kick-off was a race to a loose ball and gathered it under my spell.  I plodded down the pitch and suddenly lost my shit at the unexpected sight of the teeny tiny goals.  For the next 30-40 seconds I was treated to what felt like the wildest succession of incredibly amusing events I've seen in my adult life.  I hadn't been drinking, I hadn't been smoking, I was home alone and yet I couldn't see through tears of laughter.  Scout's honor, this tickled me in a way I haven't been tickled since the Michael Oxmall gag when I saw Hobbs & Shaw in the cinema.  My shot ricocheted off the woodwork and cannoned back upfield faster than when it left the player's boot. I guess he hit it too well.  Players started to fall over off the ball.  The crowd worked through a random medley of terrace songs that bore no relation to the on-field teams, starting with a version of You'll Never Walk Alone that never actually reached the word 'alone', with the pitch of the voices cranking up and down as the camera zoomed in and out for added lols.  I took a pot shot from 60 yards and it trickled in because Dortmund's keeper was milling about somewhere else.  Whoever scored ran to the touchline doing forward flips with a maximum of five frames of animation per spin.  I was absolutely finished, and despite the fact that it's worse than anything remotely comparable the joy injection this game gave me can't be understated.  By the second match I'd worked out that the pass button doesn't work in tandem with the directional controls, opting instead to pass to whichever player has an orange marker underneath their feet (the player controlled character is highlighted blue).  There's no point to anything really as all you ever need to do is slowly manoeuvre around players before picking your spot if the keeper's where he should be, or smashing it home if he's not.  Winning matches gains credits - 5 for each win - but I have no idea what they're for.  I was cruising to victory against Man City and the score jumped from 6-0 to 8-0 with my 7th goal.  There's a glitch where one of your teammates accidentally roams behind the goal, briefly giving him possession when you score before the ball is suddenly placed for a goal kick, which can be scrambled for like a good old fashioned drop ball (warning: touching it means the ball can't go out of play again for the rest of the match and you have to wait for the full time whistle).  The players are all poly models but they snap between angles of movement when taking throw ins.  There's no such thing as headers or volleys as far as I could tell, it's all played on the deck with no AI resistance whatsoever.  At one point I tried to let the other team score, as I was winning the cup final 5-0, and it took them around three minutes to absolutely bury it from two yards.  Nothing will prepare you for how bad this game is.  Nothing.  It's so bad it doesn't even register on the games played section of my Switch profile, so on the plus side at least no-one will ever know.  Without a moment's hesitation it's a nailed on [0], but it also offered possibly the most entertainment I've ever had out of three quid.  





146. Super Arcade Soccer 2021 - Switch

An attempt to bring the likes of Dino Dini's Goal and Kick-Off to the EShop, given that it plays as a loose approximation of that format, albeit side-on with a 3D graphics engine.  This is actually a sequel to an older indie offering, so I assumed there'd be a level of iteration refinement to the proceedings.  I was kind of right, because it clearly guzzled a few gallons more milk than the previous two games in its formative years, but it's still not very good.  

Manchester United are in, so I toyed with the idea of starting a Champions Cup campaign with Devilster, as they're known in The England League, but much as I wanted to take to the field as Juan Meta I couldn't quite stomach Eshley Oyung's presence in a game purporting to be the 2021 edition, so I decided to lift the cup with England for the third time in one day.  After tending to my team slightly - I didn't want Hyrra Kena in midfield for a start - I was ready to go.  I'm probably being thick but I still can't work out who Dynna Reso is supposed to be.  Oh wait Danny Rose, the penny dropped as I typed that.  

There's no run button, which feels odd at first but kind of works as a design choice and didn't take too long to get used to.  The fact that you can pop the ball around and it goes roughly where you want it to felt glorious after the League of Champions.  The AI struggled to score and kept getting players sent off, which helped me waltz to victory.  By the time I'd progressed through the group stage and seen off Switzerland, Serbia and then France in a surprisingly relaxed final I'd warmed to it, but not to to the point where I'd actually recommend it to anyone.  The main irritants were players constantly missing a loose ball by millimetres and sailing past it rather than taking possession, keepers that don't dive in the direction you press for penalties (again), a view that wasn't zoomed out enough to make the header button useful and a slight lack of responsiveness to the controls.  I'll probably go as high as [5] for this though, as it's another one where I can see some appeal for two players, but in all honesty it would've been average twenty years ago and it's lost a few yards of pace since.  Back then it would've been £40 though, at £6 my calculations just about work out over the course of a season.  I had to have a word with myself after this one though, it wasn't a complete disaster but nothing else was on sale and it was threatening to get out of hand.



And there endeth the project, as I ran out of options within an agreeable price range.  My watchlist is filled to the brim with similar titles though, so there will be a season two.

Clive.

Doing the lord's work there, Moot.

54: Solitairica (PC) 7/10

A freebie from the Epic Store a couple of months back, here.  It is a roguelike game of solitaire where you eliminate cards from the table in order to beat your opponents.  Each suit powers up one of your skills, you can buy new powers and items from a random selection between round.  It all works pretty well.  The rules are clear, it has nice (if plain) artwork, it's very addictive as roguelikes tend to be.

I will say, I don't know if it's a limitation of my skills or the nature of roguelikes, but I am getting a bit sick of playing a game like this for several hours and getting nowhere, until you unlock enough permanent upgrades to be strong enough to win.  I do feel a little like the first few hours are a waste of time, afterwards.  Might be that those opening hours teach you how to play properly.  I've very little idea how games work on that level to be honest.  No idea what I'm talking about.

I do know that I did enjoy it while it lasted and played it obsessively for a couple of nights and will likely never think about it again.

144fps on pc m8

55. Bonfire Peaks [7]
Loads and loads of 3D block puzzles, propped up by a constant stream of inventive mechanics involving flowing water, arrows and so on. There's no doubting the level designs are clever and give the brain a thorough workout. But it was a little short of genius for me for the amount of getting stuck involved, and the monotone presentation made it drag before the end.

56. Tunche [5]
Does a scrolling beat 'em up work as a Roguelike? In this case, not really, no. I've described it elsewhere as Streets of Hades, because it nicks the structure of SuperGiant's game pretty much wholesale, but unfortunately without remembering to make the branching path decisions through each level actually interesting. Same with the 'Streets of' bit. The fighting is very slick, to be fair, but it's insanely repetitive even by genre standards. Shame.

57. Unpacking [8]
An original idea that both manages to turn into a decent sort of puzzle game and hit some subtle narrative notes in the process. I found myself caring about things going in the right places surprisingly quickly, and managing to decorate every room in a way that seems to make sense is at least mildly taxing. But obviously the smart stuff is what it tells you in the process about people's lives and relationships through their possessions and the organisation of their living space. Still, I thought it did run out of steam a bit towards the end, perhaps because I was hoping it would do more with the concept than it ultimately did.

58. Solar Ash [8]
One of those games that not quite like anything else, even though it clearly borrows from various sources - including, in this case, Shadow of the Colossus and Mario Galaxy. It also captures the desire to explore that was there in Heart Machine's first game, Hyper Light Drifter, yet in such a radically different way. Here the crisp visual style and sprawling views invite you in, while the perpetual motion of your skate-leap-grapple move set makes sure getting to the furthest reaches is relentlessly compelling. The colossus parts are probably the weak point, in fact, paling in comparison to the pleasure of navigating these abstract spaces at speed.

59. Chorus [7]
An open-world space shooter that's too po-faced for its own good, but delivers when it comes to outer space dogfights. The tight control of your tiny ship makes it work, especially once you learn some nifty abilities like drift turns and short range teleports that leave you right behind your prey. Taking down bigger fish is fun too, as you fly right into their guts to shoot out their power cores. The story is mince, though, leading to some tedious cockpit chatter and lore-finding missions in forgotten caves. Plus the game is generally bad at communicating mission objectives, leading to some frustration as you fail again for unforeseeable reasons. A bit of Jedi patience required.

The Gunk!

60. The Gunk [6]
I felt like this should either have been a nice short narrative piece or a proper Metroid-like adventure, but as it is it sits somewhere in between and doesn't make the two halves join up. The two central characters are the best bit - a couple who genuinely care for each other but have plenty of differences and outside worries to make their relationship rocky. Exploring an alien planet while your other half warns you to be careful is different at least. The rest of it though, it's all rather limited. Like a Zelda dungeon stuck in second gear, with only a handful of puzzle types and some half-arsed enemies and upgrades. It needed to feel more wondrous and dangerous - like Journey to the Savage Planet - to really work.

There are a few naughty words in there, but other than that, yes.