Originally published on Trevor Trove on June 27, 2016
A few months ago, I wrote about some of the games that I started in the first quarter and why I gave up on them. So let’s look at some of the games that didn’t click for me in the last few months.
Day of the Tentacle Remastered – The latest Tim Schafer point-and-click adventure game to be remastered, following the success of the Grim Fandango remaster, Day of the Tentacle Remastered was the 1993 follow-up to the classic Maniac Mansion (which is included within this game as an Easter Egg, just as the it was in the original).
Why It Didn’t Click: Obtuse point-and-click adventure games just don’t seem to do it for me. I love the humor of these games, but I don’t have the inclination to wander from screen to screen looking for which random action or item should interact with which other thing. After Broken Age, Grim Fandango, and now Day of the Tentacle failed to grab me, I think I might just hang up my hat on these game types.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown Plus – I loved the original XCOM: UFO Defense game back in the 90s (I realized after the fact that I had overlooked it from my favorite games series). I would go to my friend Nick’s house just to play it because he had it and I didn’t and I remember spending hours playing it at his place while we engulfed popsicle after popsicle during the summer months. So when the series was revived a couple years back, it quickly found it’s way into my catalog.
Why It Didn’t Click: It barely ran on my PlayStation 3, of course it wasn’t going to run well on my PlayStation Vita. I had some fun with it to be sure, but I grew weary of the difficulty spike and the serious framerate stuttering. So I’ll just hold out until XCOM 2 come to PlayStation 4 in September (even though it probably will chug there too since apparently you needed a pretty good PC to run that version of the game…
Enter the Gungeon – one part “bullet hell,” one part roguelike; Enter the Gungeon featured random loot drops and random action, wrapped up in a package featuring enemies that look like bullets.
Why It Didn’t Click: Neither of those parts really appeal to me. I don’t have the time to invest in grinding through the same random levels for hours in the hopes of getting a good set of random weapons, or farming enough money to increase the odds of finding those good weapons.
Alienation – The latest twin-stick shooter from Housemarque (Resogun, Dead Nation), Alienation is a bit of a mash-up of their previous title Dead Nation, as well as a sci-fi Diablo shooter.
Why It Didn’t Click: I played through the campaign solo. It was fine enough but I didn’t really feel the urge to hop online and play with other people and run on the loot treadmill. Much like I did with Destiny, I grew tired pretty quickly of running through different sections of the same map mission after mission.
Nintendo 3DS – The Nintendo handheld that features titles like The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Pokemon X/Y, a collection of remasters from the Nintendo 64, and perhaps the most addictive title: Street Pass.
Why It Didn’t Click: No so much that it didn’t click (though really the only game I played with any frequency was taking the system to conventions and collecting Street Passes). But more that I’m pretty sure I lost it in Los Angeles for Let’s Play Live last week. I remember playing a bit of BoxBoy on the flight out there. And if I had to guess, I would say I probably put the system in the seat back pouch in front of me and forgot to grab it when I was getting off the plane. But since I was busy the whole rest of the weekend, I didn’t realize it was gone until I got home and unpacked Sunday. Don’t know if I’ll pick up a replacement but I certainly haven’t felt an overwhelming urge to get one.
So there’s the latest batch of games that just failed to connect with me in the last few months. Let me know if you’ve dropped anything in the comments here or on Twitter.