Video Games

Leaving Lyndow

I'm already actively trying to play through Metroid: Zero Mission, with doses of Pullblox on the side; I started Indiana Jones and the Great Circle anyway because now it's on the free-with-Prime tier of Amazon's Luna and I'd been so excited to play it*; also thanks to Luna's recent refresh, there's now a bunch of other games available to me that I've really wanted to play and/or have heard are great, like Dave the Diver, Hogwarts Legacy, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and Dishonored 2; I should definitely go back to Forza Horizon 4, Pilotwings Resort, Doom, and Balatro; I recently bought Dispatch at full price** on release day because I'd been looking forward to it and initial reactions suggest it's as good as hoped, so I definitely want to find time for that; a point-and-click adventure I've been very excited for ever since I backed it on Kickstarter three years ago*** is finally out tomorrow, and I wanted to finish Gray Matter before then so I could dive straight in (obviously not going to happen now); and I actually drafted this post to highlight the ridiculousness of the fact I decided to have a crack at Skyrim for the first time ever — a game with an average minimum completion time of almost 30 hours, but for which the median playtime is over 100...

But, instead, I bought Leaving Lyndow for 67p this evening and immediately played that. Huh?

Okay, a bit more context. I was recently looking into open world games, because for whatever reason I've had a hankering to play one (hence Skyrim), and learnt about a game called Eastshade that sounded like it might be perfect: you play an artist, there's no combat, you just explore and complete side quests and stuff like that; and it's supposed to be beautiful. Sounds right up my street! So I wishlisted it; then, yesterday, it went on sale on Steam, so I instantly bought it. I was also aware it had a prequel, Leaving Lyndow. Various games seem to have "prequels" or "prologues" nowadays, and from what I can tell they're just a glorified demo — the opening chunk of the game, available for free. I'm sure there's some algorithm-related reason why it's better to list them that way. Anyway, I ignored Lyndow on the assumption it was the same, but then something today (I've already forgotten what) led me to discover it was actually a separate-but-connected game. Well, that settled it: I had to play that first, really. Well, maybe I didn't have to, but when it's only 67p in the same sale and reportedly takes about 45 minutes, it seemed rude not to.

It actually took me an hour, because I'm me and so explored quite thoroughly. It's definitely a gentle and relaxing game, as advertised, but also with a bit of an emotional storyline about a young person leaving home for the first time. It's not long enough to really get into that and thus it doesn't hit home as much as a fully-developed narrative could, but it's serviceable.

It also looks fairly beautiful. It's made for wandering around and appreciating what you see, so it needs to look pleasant, really. There were a few bugs (a character fully clipped through a tree at one point), and it's got that thing where it looks amazing in screenshots / when you're stood still, but when you start moving around all the ways those things are achieved immediately become obvious — but then, in my (limited) experience, this is still a thing with most games. And, in fairness, it's also almost nine years old and was made by indie developers; so while it does lack graphical polish in minor areas that I suspect would lead graphics-obsessed AAA-game players to think it looked rubbish, to me — who's been out of this kind of gaming for a very long time and hasn't exactly dived in to the current high-end of graphical amazingness (yet) — it still looked pretty special. Eastshade proper was released two years later, so I hold out hope it had even greater polish, but even if it's at the same level, it has the potential to live up to its reputation for beauty.


* I nearly subscribed to Xbox Game Pass just to play this, so getting to have a go at it on a service I'm already subscribed to is awesome. (I say "have a go" because, knowing Luna, it'll get locked away behind Premium long before I get a chance to finish it (see: Dungeons of Hinterberg and Control).

** Well, I did get the 10% first-week discount; but that was the "full price" at the time, so…

*** It does not feel like it's been three whole years. Wow. That's ages to have been waiting. I mean, it's not uncommon for Kickstarters to end up taking a stupidly long time to fulfil — when I back them, I always take a "it will be here when it's here" attitude, because expecting them on time and sitting waiting for that is a recipe for madness — but I never would've guessed it had been so long.

Games

3D Sonic the Hedgehog
I had two goes at starting the next level, did phenomenally poorly both times, and quit. My 3DS logged my playtime as 1 minute. I might be done with Sonic now… apart from giving Sonic 2 a go, anyway. Can’t imagine it will go any better, but you never know.

Control
Quite enjoying this, but after about 3½ hours played it still feels like I'm quite early in the game — like, it's underway, but I know there are much-discussed gameplay elements I haven't unlocked yet; plus, HowLongToBeat says it takes at least 13 hours to play through, so there's that. Normally that would be fine, but it's making me wonder if I'm wasting my time playing it on Luna, considering that it leaves the free-with-Prime section in 9 days — I either get it done by then, or my progress is lost. I could pay for Luna+ to continue it, but it would be better value to just buy it next time it's on sale: a month of Luna+ is £9 and this was recently available for about £3. (I've missed that offer now, but it'll be back.) Not sure whether to forge on or call it a day — and, say, go back to the last game where this happened.

Pilotwings Resort
Back to the 3DS, with more success: 58 minutes of this. Still annoyed by the time limit on free flight, but I’m beginning to get slightly better at controlling the jet pack and glider. Neither are as fun as the plane, but you have to use them to complete some things, and completing things is the only way to unlock more stuff, so…

Games

Balatro
I swear people talk about this as a quick “pick up and play a round” kind of game, but I played one run today and it took over half-an-hour, and I only made it about halfway before losing. Maybe it gets quicker when/if you know what you’re doing, I dunno…

Pilotwings Resort
This is my most recent acquisiton for the 3DS and, rather than add it to the bottom of the backlog, I've started it immediately. Kinda counterintuitive, but this was a launch title for the system, and is a relatively gentle experience designed to show off the system's stereoscopic capabilities. It's quite fun, though undermined by some daft decisions — why is Free Flight mode limited to 2 minutes?! It feels like it's enforced just to stop you flying around for a while and getting all the achievements (unlocking 75 locations) in one sitting. Apparently you can lengthen the flight time by completing challenges, etc, but it still maxes out at 5 minutes. Sucks.


Steam Deck
I was going to list this under the heading of the games involved, because I played a chunk of them to test things out... but I didn't really play them, because this was primarily about more fiddling with the tech. But for the last time (I think) — hurrah!

So, what happened was, today I finally got round to connecting my Steam Deck to my TV; and though that bit worked flawlessly, it annoyed me that one of my emulated GameCube games, 007: Everything or Nothing, was in 4:3 when it specifically has a widescreen mode. A bunch of Reddit-browsing later, I'd found the settings I needed to fiddle with to not only get widescreen working, but get the game running in 1080p HD. And it looks so much better for it! (But god knows how many times I've played through the first mission now as part of my testing. I've even completed it on the hardest difficulty with Platinum goals completed! Regular readers* will know how unlike me that is.)

And because I was fiddling with that, I also had a look into my other GC title, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. That was even more involved again, though I do now have it in HD and widescreen thanks to inputting a cheat code for the latter and installing a fan-made HD texture pack for the former — and now it looks so good too! And now, after many hours of faffing, these are finally nicely set up to play. Now I just need to actually play them...

* Don't worry, I know no one reads this.