In the meantime I've been playing a fair bit of Pinball FX2 - I simply love this game. I'm not brilliant at it, but with persistence and time, can get respectable scores. I've also played a bit of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the first time in a couple of years. By the time I'd ranked up in freeplay (as I found out, now required to play competitive games) and played ~15 matches, I'd started losing interest. You need to play a lot to improve and rank up, and playing the same few maps with (at my skill level) a fair share of unpleasant people, it gets boring.
Showing posts with label steam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steam. Show all posts
Thursday, 24 March 2016
Off season
Obviously not finding much to write about at the moment. My WoW time has been decreasing and not particularly interesting; completing nemesis in Ashran again, this time on my shaman, and a lot of pet collecting and levelling. I've finally caught all the old world pets, and there's now less than 100 pets I don't have, but most of those are store bought, promotional, recruit-a-friend rewards, and collector's edition pets that I simply won't be getting. So I'm waiting for the next pet bonus week to get back to pet levelling, and in the meantime I've run into a progression brick wall. Most of what I need to do is in battlegrounds, and trying to accomplish anything there solo is not enjoyable (especially as Horde), so I'm sticking to our one PvP night a week.
In the meantime I've been playing a fair bit of Pinball FX2 - I simply love this game. I'm not brilliant at it, but with persistence and time, can get respectable scores. I've also played a bit of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the first time in a couple of years. By the time I'd ranked up in freeplay (as I found out, now required to play competitive games) and played ~15 matches, I'd started losing interest. You need to play a lot to improve and rank up, and playing the same few maps with (at my skill level) a fair share of unpleasant people, it gets boring.
In the meantime I've been playing a fair bit of Pinball FX2 - I simply love this game. I'm not brilliant at it, but with persistence and time, can get respectable scores. I've also played a bit of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the first time in a couple of years. By the time I'd ranked up in freeplay (as I found out, now required to play competitive games) and played ~15 matches, I'd started losing interest. You need to play a lot to improve and rank up, and playing the same few maps with (at my skill level) a fair share of unpleasant people, it gets boring.
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
Hexcells
I picked up the Hexcells pack on Steam during one of the sales recently. Hexcells is a relaxing puzzle game that involves using logic to uncover a blue pattern in a hex grid in a way that is reminiscent of Minesweeper.
The primary mechanism is a grey cell type that contains a number showing how many adjacent cells are blue. The game introduces further mechanics as you progress through the levels, such as the number of blue cells in a given row, and the pacing is pretty good.
Each puzzle gives you a starting point, and while there is some freedom in how you solve it, for the most part the solution unfolds logically. Completing a puzzle rewards you with a predetermined number of hexes, which are required to unlock later puzzles. If you make a mistake, this is subtracted from the hex reward count, however the unlock requirement is quite lenient. You can play at your own pace, there are no timers or real score mechanics, so there is no need to guess; the satisfaction comes in finding the logical solution and solving it with no mistakes.
The first game is relatively simple, and short as a result - expect to finish it in a couple of hours. The puzzles get more complex from there so you'll get more time out of those, and the third game adds a random seed mode that I have yet to try, and mid-level progress saves that are sorely missed in the second game.
The game has an ambient background noise that when combined with the notes played when uncovering cells creates a relaxing soundtrack, but it gets repetitive particularly when you get momentarily stuck. I'd have liked an option to disable the background track, in addition to a complete mute button.
This type of game is right up my alley, requires thinking but isn't stressful, and can be played in short bursts. I would recommend the pack (I got it for under $US 3) and playing through them in order, over picking up just one installment.
Each puzzle gives you a starting point, and while there is some freedom in how you solve it, for the most part the solution unfolds logically. Completing a puzzle rewards you with a predetermined number of hexes, which are required to unlock later puzzles. If you make a mistake, this is subtracted from the hex reward count, however the unlock requirement is quite lenient. You can play at your own pace, there are no timers or real score mechanics, so there is no need to guess; the satisfaction comes in finding the logical solution and solving it with no mistakes.
The first game is relatively simple, and short as a result - expect to finish it in a couple of hours. The puzzles get more complex from there so you'll get more time out of those, and the third game adds a random seed mode that I have yet to try, and mid-level progress saves that are sorely missed in the second game.
The game has an ambient background noise that when combined with the notes played when uncovering cells creates a relaxing soundtrack, but it gets repetitive particularly when you get momentarily stuck. I'd have liked an option to disable the background track, in addition to a complete mute button.
This type of game is right up my alley, requires thinking but isn't stressful, and can be played in short bursts. I would recommend the pack (I got it for under $US 3) and playing through them in order, over picking up just one installment.
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