Tried a few more of my Humble Monthly picks. ^[1]

First one was Trine 4. Aka The Nightmare Prince. It’s a puzzle platformer. The puzzles are what are known as “physics” puzzles as they rely on things like gravity and momentum and other real world-esque principles.

I did not expect to like this game at all. Puzzle type games of this sort just aren’t my bag, baby, and I figured my time with the game would be brief.

Just a quick look to confirm that, yup, hate it, and then I’d move on.

But the game won me over and it wasn’t easy. But the gorgeous and colorful graphics, gently silly sense of humour, and fun puzzles that are just challenging enough to be fun won me over.

Plot is simple. Three legendary heroes (a mage, a knight, and a thief) must band together to find a magically talented but incautious prince who performed some kind of spell involving shadows and got himself dragged off by them.

Each hero has puzzle-type abilities (mage can levitate objects, knight can reflect things with his shield, thief shoots rope arrow, etc) and the puzzles involve their use.

There’s combat too, but it seems arbitrary and tacked on. This is a puzzle game.

Like I said, I did not expect to like this game. But it’s just too appealing to dislike. The art style I would call broadly storybook, but with cartoon-y elements and graphics that are colorful without offending your eyeballs.

And everything is so beautiful. Check it out. Fullscreen recommended.

And the gameplay is fun. Some of the puzzles have been tricky to solve, but not unfairly so, and there is great pleasure in figuring them out.

So much to my surprise, I heartily recommend this game. It is delightful.

I also tried a game called Outward. Supposedly to be a hardcore survival game (ick) in a fantasy setting. Only rates a 67 percent on Metacritic. I did not expect to like it.

But it wouldn’t run on my system, so I will never know.

Finally, I played the demo for a recent hot game called Ghostrunner.

And wow, is it impressive. You are a recently awoken robot ninja in a cyberpunk setting who has to rescue a mysterious voice in your head named Whisper. You can do cool stuff like run along walls and slow down time and so on. And you have a sweet katana.

Sounds like a kickass action game, right?

Wrong. It’s actually a puzzle game. Gameplay consists of figuring out how to get from A to B, with possible brief bits of combat thrown in.

That’s not why I uninstalled it though. I turfed it because there is no way my old dude reflexes can handle all the tricky jumps and precisely timed button pushes and so on that the game demands.

Very impressive, but not my cup of tea at all.

More after the break.

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So much for the easy stuff

I like it when I have reviews and such to write because the mental overhead costs for that kind of thing are way lower than my usual freeform stream of consciousness prose you all have come to know and tolerate.

Because I don’t have to think about what I am going to write. It structures itself, more or less. Just review or comment on the next thing. Easy.

Possibly not as illuminating or therapeutic as my usual fare, but nice for a change.

Makes me wonder if I should start reviewing things on Vocal. Patient readers will remember that Vocal is a blogging platform that pays bloggers if they get enough views of their blog entries.

I have to admit that the place intimidates me.

Which is silly, because I know I’m a very good, funny, relatable writers who can write stuff even relatively stuffed shirts recognize as hilarious. I really have no reason to fear the place. In fact, I “should” jump in with both feet and a tail and prove to the world what a god damned amazing writer I am.

But I’m scared. So I don’t. Story of my life, really.

So much for “should”.

Depression’s usual thugs stand in the way.

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Option paralysis : what do I write about? There are billions of possibilities! I can’t possibly choose! Well clearly all I can do is nothing, then.

Fear of failure : what if it turns out nobody likes my writing? What if it turns out I suck? As long as I do nothing, I keep the dream that I am amazing alive. Why risk that?

Fear of success : what if it turns out that I really am as amazing as I think I am and people instantly love my writing and suddenly I am plucked from my cozy hidey hole and thrown into the spotlight of public scrutiny and people are depending on me and wanting things from me and expecting things of me and this safe little life of mine would be shattered forever? OH GOD NO.

The Unnamed Dread : That general feeling that I am just barely keeping my head above water and barely holding my guts in after severe abdominal trauma and anything, absolutely anything, that rocks the boat will sink it fast and deep. The feeling that Something Terrible is going to happen. Something so terrible I can’t even bear to look at it long enough to figure out what it is.

The guaranteed loser : the feeling that if there’s competition, I lose, especially if there is a lot of it. With a million people all trying to make it on Vocal, what are the odds that I will be able to beat them all?

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So, ya know, all your favorite characters, both new and old, in an all star craptastiganza sure to please the whole family… even little Mikey, and he hates everything!

Lately I keep telling myself to just focus on doing whatever I can to get better, and that there is nothing more than I am “supposed” to be doing.

I tell myself this over and over and over. No matter what potential I have, no matter how powerful I am, no matter how badly I want to get out into the world, the only thing that matters right now is getting better.

Repeat until believed.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.