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This was a quick play after Thank Goodness You’re Here!, and it’s sort of a prototype for what that game ended up being. It’s more abstract, but still very silly.
This time, you’re a sort of naked onionman thing who has to find food for a creature in order to progress. There’s not a lot to it, but it was enjoyable enough – and free on Steam! Bargain.
Sometimes, a game comes along which is properly hilarious. Sure, there are funny games, and games with funny events or “player made” hilarity, but it’s rare for a funny game to be this funny.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! is what we used to call an arcade adventure game. I suppose, in some ways, it’s the spiritual successor to such British 8-bit computer games as Everyone’s A Wally and Jack the Nipper. You, as a little (although his size randomly changes somehow) yellow man have arrived at the mayor’s office only to find you’ve some time to kill so wander outside. Then begins a ridiculous chain of events across this northern town where you’re expected to help out in various stupid and nonsensical ways.
For example, one of your first tasks involves freeing a portly gentleman who has reached into a drain to reach a tuppence and got his arm stuck. Off you go to the bakery to nick a load of butter with which to lubricate the arm, which frees him and reveals it to actually be a thruppence, not a tuppence. What joy!
Other tasks include arranging smoking fish in a fishmongers, repeatedly annoying a quiet old man by plopping through his chimney sooting up his living room, and fetching meat to make pies. There’s a huge number of proper Northern people who populate this town, ably voiced by Matt Berry and Jon Blyth, amongst others, who add even more silliness to the proceedings. Events that just happen around you, like the singing rats in bins, the Sausage Man, and the chap who sells bricks, as well as a few romances and rivalries (there’s a near war in the Big Pie vs Little Pie side story). Every few seconds there’s a funny event, new character, or bit of dialogue, and it all feels a bit Python-y and a bit On The Buses-y in the best possible way. There’s also a load of adverts for in-universe products which are hilarious.
The gameplay is pretty simple, mostly involving some minor platforming and fetch and carry requests punctuated with a bit of exploration and pathfinding as various areas are revisited in different ways as routes open up or close. That’s not a criticism like it might be with a “straight” game, as the point here is to enjoy the people and the setting (and the accents) more than the gameplay itself which is mostly just the vehicle to progress the story and events.
It’s a really unique game, and I wish I could forget all about it so I can play it again and re-discover it all.
Play
Cyberpunk 2077 (PS5)
It has taken me a while to understand all the systems at play in the game but I finally have my Netrunner V, going in with Contagion & using Overdrive for Synapse Burnout. If all else fails my trust Tier 5 pistol can headshot for 150% damage!
The star of the game is Night City, just an amazing city to explore and so much to discover from random gang fights to gigs.
I am currently about 75 hours in but I expect I will be playing this game for all of February and maybe even March!
Want
I stayed strong and avoided purchasing Star Wars Outlaw, I just need to focus on enjoying what I own.
I have added a few more titles to my shopping list and currently it is quite long but I won't be buying anything for a long while.
Baldurs Gate 3, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Shadow Gambit Cursed Crew, Star Wars Outlaws, Ghost of Yotei, Metal Gear Solid Delta, Death Stranding 2, Like a Dragon Pirate Yakuza, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Mafia The Old Country, The Alters, Clair Obscur Expedition 33, Kriegsfront Tactics, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream & Dispatch.
Bin
Nothing except maybe my lack of gaming time at the moment being limited to a few hours a week.
I still have never completed Half-Life. I must have played through the opening levels multiple times, enjoying the scene setting and the initial escape from the headcrabs. The game is still quite spooky and panic-inducing at times, with mild jump scares and swarms of enemies appearing; the library in Halo is an obvious comparison, but Half-Life’s setting is much more varied and less monotonous than that.
I play the game quite cautiously, conserving ammunition as much as possible but shooting at the enemies from a distance. There are quite a lot of health recharge stations around (as far as I’ve got, at least), and I’m making maximum use of quick save functionality to keep my health high as I work through the levels. I get the feeling that this isn’t the way I’m supposed to play it, and maybe once I’ve completed it once I might be a little more gung-ho and run through the levels, much as I do nowadays with the first three Halo games.
For now, though, I’m enjoying it. I’ve reached the part where the soldiers first appear (in the chapter “We’ve got Hostiles”), and the scientists are overjoyed to be saved … until they aren’t. I’ve made my way up the lift and outside, only to run back into the vents as a helicopter started to attack me. They’re now using laser trip wires to set off sentry guns; I get the feeling they’re not interested in a chat over coffee.
After the credits, I loaded my game to find myself back at my house, where my mum offered me a rest, almost as if nothing had happened. The world seemed unchanged, as if my quest had never taken place. Sure, if I went to the gyms I’m sure I’d see my name listed, always below Quillum, but that was just a small detail.
The real prize was elsewhere, in a cave which had previously been blocked by someone warning me that it contained high-level pokémon and it was too dangerous for me to go in. Hah, no more, I’m the champion of the world, don’t you know? There is no pokémon too mighty for me to beat!
I stopped at a pokémon centre, picked up the master ball I’d been saving, and off I went.
Fighting through the cave was tricky. It was a proper maze, with multiple routes which meant that more than once I ended up back where I’d started. Moreover, the enemies in the cave were exclusively random encounters, with no trainers – meaning that when I quit out due to having sustained too much damage, I had to start again when I reentered, with only my knowledge of the route improving. In other dungeons, the trainers were the most difficult opponents, and once you beat them once, they let you past freely. No such grace from wild pokémon. Luckily, Vaporeon’s attacks were highly effective against many of the pokémon I encountered.
I collected a couple of new pokémon as I progressed, generally evolutions of those I have already captured, as well as some higher level monsters I could possibly use as trades in the future. And eventually I found an opponent standing tall on a mound in the deepest part of the cave.
The master ball actually made this a little anti-climactic. There was no attack from the level-70 opponent; no desperate juggling of revives and heals. I threw the ball, Mewtwo got in it.
And I think I’m done. There are quite a few pokémon which I could catch but haven’t, but getting those will require lots of grinding (for evolutions) or random luck (in the Safari Zone) and I have other things to be doing. Farewell, Pokémon Blue, it’s been a blast.
