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Fallout: New Vegas (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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How kind of Amazon to give this away for free just after I’d played Fallout 3 which was also given away for free!

Like with Fallout 3, I wanted to play this as A Bad Man, but actually, I didn’t. Well, not entirely. You see, I wasn’t really a big fan of all the factions in New Vegas, not least because none of them were truly “good”: The NCR wanted control and land, Caesar’s Legion wanted slaves and loved to murder, Mr House was such an Elon even though he should have died decades ago, and the Great Kahns were happy to cosy up with the Legion and provide drugs to even worse people. The Brotherhood of Steel, ostensibly the “good guys” in Fallout 3 (or as near as possible) didn’t see an issue with melting anyone who had any technology and acted more like the Enclave than the righteous folk they were in Washington. Even the smaller groups, like the Boomers and the Nightkin had “social issues”.

I decided early that the “least worst” of the Big Three was probably the NCR, so happily tore my way through all the Legion on my quest to find Benny and the Platinum Chip. By the time the NCR told me I had to “deal with” the Brotherhood, I couldn’t be bothered sorting out their problems so killed them all at the first opportunity then blew up their bunker.

OK, so maybe I was a little bad.

Whatever. I enjoyed playing through this again, and completed a big raft of optional missions and stuff, although I didn’t do any of the DLC. At least, I haven’t done it yet – there’s a good chance I might.

Oh, and as this wasn’t an Epic store game, I didn’t have crashes like I did with Fallout 3! Well, I had one or two, but I was getting that many each hour previously. Stupid Epic.

Scream Collector (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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With a thousand PC games to choose from in my Steam/Epic/GOG/Itch libraries, mostly unplayed, you’d think I would never need to even look in the Steam store for something else to pass the time, right? And, if I did, you’d expect I might be picking out some high profile or highly lauded title that I don’t already own, yeah? Well, no. For I stumbled across this shambolic looking free-to-play clicker game instead, and then spent THIRTY HOURS completing it. No, you’re an idiot.

The theme here is a haunted house, so instead of cookies or paperclips you buy gravestones and pumpkins with which to bump up your scream income. The mechanics are the same as most other clickers – the more you buy the more you earn more quickly and the more the next things cost. It’s a Numbers Go Up game.

What’s different, is that there are a few minigames that make up part of the game. You get prize spinners to boost your income a bit or give you free items, you can play a game of Simon on the windows of the house, and there are ghosts to catch and witches to melt. There’s also two more clicker games within the clicker game – one set in the basement where you earn “preparedness” by hoarding water and food and toilet rolls and other pandemic stuff, and another which opens up after completing the main game where you deck out the interior of the house with candles and spiders and other spooky things. I also completed the basement, but I draw the line at the house hallway – many of the “jumps” up to the next power-of-ten are missing, so it just takes even longer to get anywhere.

It’s mindless, somehow addictive, and although it has IAPs I had no need of them at all.

World of Goo (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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It’s been a long time since I last played this on the Wii. I blame not having another machine with a suitable input device, as it only really works with touch screens and pointers, not control sticks. Yes, I know I could have managed on the Switch or even on the Mac, but anyway. Trackpad on the Steam Deck it is.

I’d totally forgotten about most of the “story”, and have no recollection of the Information Superhighway “world” at all. Which is good, because I didn’t want to remember the solutions to the levels! That said, I didn’t have any difficultly whipping through the whole game in about three hours

The Norwood Suite (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Another PC-locked, Steam Deck-freed game! Who knows, one day my huge Steam backlog may finally be dented. (Narrator: it never was)

The Norwood Suite is one of a series of first person narrative discovery games set in the same universe. I don’t know the order they’re in (if indeed they are), but I think this is the first one? It doesn’t really matter though, as it’s utterly mental so even if I did get some references, the rest is nuts anyway.

It’s set in a hotel, and filled with staff and residents who are all a bit unusual. Many need you to perform simple tasks (make a sandwich, fetch drinks from a car) but the bulk of the game is uncovering the story through exploring the hotel and, ultimately, gaining access to The Norwood Suite.

It’s difficult to describe the story past “Norwood was a musician who owned the hotel and the hotel is a mecca for musicians” without spoiling anything, so I won’t. But, it was bafflingly enjoyable, janky, confusing and silly in various quantities.

Wargroove (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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One of those games from ages ago that I was really looking forward to, but it took forever to come out and when it did, I’d sort of stopped caring. At least, enough to pay for it anyway. But for free, on my Steam Deck? Ah, gwan then.

Yes, it’s Advance Wars. Graphically and mechanically, anyway. In fact, in those respects, it’s so close to Advance Wars that I’m amazed the normally trigger-happy Nintendo Fun Lawyers didn’t set upon it like they do with all the Mario and Metroid fan games. Of course, it’s not exactly the same. It’s a fantasy setting a bit closer to Fire Emblem, with horses and caravans and archers (and tree people and giants and mer-folk and turtles?!) rather than soldier and tanks and bigger tanks and huge tanks – but most Wargroove units are effectively Advance Wars unit analogues. They’re just a bit unusual.

A big set of thumbs up for being like Advance Wars are that it plays as well as Advance Wars, is as addictive as Advance Wars, and fills a big old hole where Advance Wars hasn’t been for what, a decade or something now? Sure, there’s the remake of the first two games on the way, but who knows when that will actually land.

Wargroove is a perfect fit for a handheld, and really I should have bought it for my Switch long ago as I really enjoyed it. Even if the last few levels were clearly impossible and I had to knock the difficulty down a notch – whereupon I found that Hard is the default! Madness.