Some Thoughts on Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion

Image: Steam

Open-world Adventure Time game starring characters from the TV-series? Sign me up!

Well, let's start from the positive things. Most of the time I really liked Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion. It had some great moments, good jokes and familiar faces. Battles are easy yet still have some deepness, and sailing on OOo which is underwater is fun. Unfortunately game also has a lot of problems, like bad framerates while sailing, lots of bugs and some weird design choices. As much I liked Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion, at the times this game was a chore to get through. 

I played Nintendo Switch version which, as stated, had some problems with framerates. Loading times, for example when entering to battle, where long which got a bit irritating when I got to the point where many enemies could be defeated with one or two hits. At one point game got stuck after defeating a boss and I had to restart that particular battle two or three times. Not fun.

Image: Steam

World was enjoyable. You'll go through some familiar places like Candy Kingdom, and running around Adventure Time's world is something that I enjoyed, especially after Jake learned to turn into a bike. Yes. Sailing part was also fun (when the frames were not freezing) though I would love to have more interactions on the sea. Now there's only some junk to collect and pirate ships to defeat.

Story and missions are not anything special, but it was nice to hear familiar voice actors delivering dialogue. Unfortunately sound mixing was weird at times and volume levels didn't make sense - sometimes when character spoke you hear it very silently while everything else is loud. Side missions were... Well, I completed all of them though mostly you just need to find a thing or destroy a thing. Can't see a reason for completing those unless you are a big Adventure Time fan like me. There was also an interrogation minigame which seemed promising but was forgotten pretty soon - it didn't really have anything to add to game.

Image: Steam

Mostly Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion made me want a good, polished open-world Adventure Time game. There's so much potential for something like that and it makes me a little bit angry that this game is so rushed and buggy. It could have been so much more! Would I recommend it? For Adventure Time fans, maybe - if you have patience to deal with all the broken things (thanks to Fallout-series I see bugs almost as a feature at this point!). For anyone else? I don't know. It's a great first turn-based RPG if you never have played one as it teaches all the important mechanics, but I guess there are more polished games that do the same thing better. I guess?

Anyway, that's what I thought about Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion. Not the best game, but I till enjoyed some of it.

RimWorld has taken over my life

My colony burned to the ground because of lightning.

All of my colonists were kidnapped.

Half of my colony were killed while exploring.

And still I can't stop playing this game. Why it's so fun to suffer?

After few very failed attempts I've been able to get my colony work, though dropping difficulty and playing with Phoebe Chillax for a while was a must. And I thought that watching Vinny Vinesauce's RimWorld streams were enough tutorial! I also decided to play without saving or loading, which gives the game some more meaning. Normally I hate playing with permadeath, but with RimWorld it's how the game and the stories it creates work best - at least for me. Everyone has their own way to play, and the most important thing is to have fun! And not loosing all of your colonists.

For me the magic of RimWorld is the stories - it's a story generator after all. Micromanaging is all fun and stuff, but the interactions and random events that take place during all the gameplay are the the salt and pepper of the experience. It's like a TV-series that just keep going on and on and on... Most of the time you can just lay back and watch as your little ant colony works, but when something catastrophic happens, you get a real adrenaline rush - just like in a football (not the American one, I mean ''soccer'') match! 

Truly a masterpiece.

How 7 Days to Die made me feel scared again

I love horror. It's one of my favourite genres and aesthetics, but there's not many games that make me feel scared - I might get spooked by a jump scare or get little bit tense by the good atmosphere, but it's never something that really makes me feel nervous. It's more like just ''this looks and sounds good but why should I be scared of it? It's fiction!''

Truly the last game (or in fact a demo) which made me really uneasy was one of the first ones I ever played: Half-Life: Uplink. I remember playing it in mid 2000s in a small room with an old computer, and the first encounter with headcrab zombie was enough to give 12-year old me nightmares. And to this day I think that Half-Life games, especially the first one, are masterfully crafted horror experiences. But as I got older, the spookiness didn't work on me anymore.

And then I played 7 Days to Die. This game makes me seriously uneasy - and I love that. There's something special about the game's crusty graphics and clumsy gameplay which makes it truly scary at some times. It feels that you're never safe, even after you have locked yourself in the highest spot of your base, because zombies will tear everything apart if you give them a chance. And the fact that you may just hurt yourself deadly by accidentally bumping on your own spike traps just makes me nervous - I need to be on my toes all of the time.

I like that. It's fun to try to keep yourself alive in a hopeless situation - because if you do it makes you feel like you can achieve anything in life. And if you die, you can always try again (unlike in real life). 

Ampu-Tea

''Kas näin lentää pöytä, ja pöytä lentää näin...''

Julkaistu: 2014
Alustat: PC, Xbox 360
Kehittäjä: ProjectorGames
Julkaisija: KISS ltd
Pelimoottori: Unity

Ampu-Tea on Surgeon Simulator keittiössä. Tylsempänä. Vaikeampana. Ja Huonompana.

Kello viisi
Ampu-Teassa tavoitteena on tehdä kuppi teetä. Kuulostaa helpolta, eikö? Noh, sitä se ei tosiaankaan ole. Ampu-Tea lainaa Surgeon Simulatorista tutun väkkärän hiiriohjauksen ja yhdistää siihen vähänkin kovemmassa käsittelyssä hajoavan proteesin, jolloin lopputulos on pelkkää kaaosta. Ampu-Tea on hauskaa ensimmäiset viisi minuuttia, jonka jälkeen selviää että tämähän on tätä samaa koko ajan. Asiaa ei helpota se, että suunnilleen kaikki ns. ''etsittävät'' saavutukset tulee avattua vahingossa ensimmäisten minuuttien kaaoksen aikana...

Ampu-Tea on onneksi ilmainen, joten sen kokeilemisesta ei menetä mitään muuta kuin hermonsa. Edit: Eipäs ollukkaan, olen ostanut sen joskus. Tällä hetkellä maksaa 74 senttiä kesäalessa, normaalisti viitisen euroa...

+ omalaatuinen idea
- heikko toteutus
- peli on nähty muutamassa minuutissa