Unfinished Games of 2019: Part 1

Unfinished Games:

Unfinished Games of 2019: Part 1

Unfinished Games of 2019: Part 2

Unfinished Games of 2020: Part I

Unfinished Games of 2020: Part II

 
For Awkward Mixture I attempt to finish a game before writing a review, even if it's a game I wouldn't recommend playing, like Domina, Star Tactics, Divinity: Original Sin, etc, etc, etc. A worthy goal, but not always worth the effort. I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the games I didn't complete. This article and the next will briefly examine eight games. 
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Distrust: Polar Survival
Time Played: 2 Hours

Developed by Cheerdealers and Alawar, creators of Beholder (another game I didn't consider worth finishing), Distrust is a survival game set at an arctic research center. Based on the 1982 horror movie, The Thing, the player controls the remnants of a rescue team, sent to the base after it went silent. A helicopter leaves the crew scattered and desperate as they seek to unravel the mystery awaiting them.

The player controls two members of the rescue party as they explore seven randomly generated areas. The crew aims unlock the gate leading into the next area by finding the necessary tools in their current location. In each area the rescue team learns more about what caused the stations deterioration. Each area contains a number of small buildings separated by wide swaths of open, snowy terrain, which the characters run between to procure the needed equipment. The first area or two are relatively safe, for it appears as if the recent inhabitants have only recently vacated it. Buildings still contain running furnaces, leftover food and medical equipment, and working generators. As the characters venture deeper into the darkness at the heart of the complex the areas turn inhospitable, freezing wastelands of broken equipment and devoid of food.

Because of the randomly generated levels, each play-through is supposed to be unique, but the tasks remain the same. The player must balance each rescuer's three visible health bars to make sure they don't die: warmth, stamina, and satiety. There is also a hidden health bar, mood, whose depletion doesn't kill the character, but causes them to develop a disturbing trait. While trying to survive by repairing broken furnaces, finding enough food to eat, and locating a suitable location for a nap, Distrust threatens the player with a final threat: the anomalies. These glowing balls of light appear only when a character is sleeping, but remain to sap the characters of their strength, driving them mad.

In conclusion, Distrust (which features no betrayal or paranoia mechanic) is a repetitive survival horror game, which requires repeatedly repeating tasks just long enough to stay alive in an arctic wilderness. The first three or four area feels the same, as they don't contain NPCS or activatable events to engage the player. It might be improved by playing with a friend, but it doesn't include local split-screen nor should this redeem the game.
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Road Redemption
Time Played: 3 Hours

I remember playing an iteration of Road Rash with my cousin back in the early '90s. The goal was to win motorcycle race, while fighting off other racers with fists, chains, and bats. Police intervened and avoiding them required extra caution, as being knocked off a bike would lead to an arrest.

I regard the game nostalgically, which is what developer EQ Games was banking on when released Road Redemption in 2018. It is nearly an exact replica (as far as I can remember from twenty-five years ago), and yet everything seems off.

In Road Redemption the player controls a member of a biker gang determined to catch an assassin with a $15,000,000 reward on his head. Each race features one of five objectives: Race to finish in the top three, kill a certain number of enemies, kill a specific enemy, survive, or finish the race in a certain amount of time. Completing the objective earns bonus cash and experience, a crucial resource for advancing in the game.

For the story mode, each race has three possible outcomes. Finish with the objective, finish without the objective, or die. Road Redemption includes permadeath but with a twist. After each race the player finishes alive they spend their cash to buy upgrades for their current character. After dying, the player spends their experience to purchase upgrades and unlocks for their future races. Players can unlock better bikes, bonus experience, and the ability to skip parts of the story they've already completed. But the ability to unlock bonuses is incredibly costly. The gathering of experience is a slow process requiring many, many, many attempts to unlock bikes and levels.

Road Redemption shows hints of fun occasionally, but most levels feel the same (exceptions: the one where cars drop from the sky, and the level racing across rooftops). Regardless of the goal, the player should always kill as many opponents as possible, as each kill rewards the player with nitro, money, experience, and (most importantly) health. The thrill of blowing cars with C4 is as explosive as the results, but soon it becomes as dull as beating up racers with bats.

In addition to tiresome repetition, Road Redemption includes a host of small issues. The screen for purchasing upgrades doesn't allow the player to deselect if they click on something by accident. The game doesn't include a save feature, which the developer says was intentional. According to EQ games part of the feature of RR is the rogue-like, permadeath style game. While racing there is no button to back up if the player gets stuck. The visual effects don't improve the performance but cover the whole scene in a muddy, dull color.

The one aspect worthy of credit is the inclusion of a split screen mode for the PC, when most publishers have abandoned this feature. Maybe, like Distrust, I would have enjoyed the Road Redemption if I played with a friend, but as a single player experience it's a grind.

In conclusion, Road Redemption isn't a racing game, because enemies always accelerate to the player's position and lock in place for a duel to the death. The player can separate temporarily from a crowd with nitro, but the enemy accelerates seconds later. But, the real problem is the games repetitive nature, and the grind necessary to unlock the rewards to reach the race's end.
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Dota Underlords
Time Played: 2 Hours

Regular readers will know that Defense of the Ancients is one of my favorite games. Dota came into existence as a mod for WarCraft 3 on Blizzard's Battlenet. Dota itself includes a custom game section, where creators can build and display their modified games for free. In January of 2019, a modding group released Dota Auto Chess, and by mid-May over 8 million players were playing it in Dota. The creator of Dota, Valve, and creator of Auto Chess, Drodo Studio, supposedly tried to work out an arrangement for distributing the game, but couldn't come to a deal. Instead the two went their own ways, with Drodo forced to recreate their game as Auto Chess without any Dota identifiers. Valve worked quickly to capitalize on the new phenomenon, releasing their own version, Dota Underlords, in June.

In spite of its beginnings Underlords has nothing in common with Dota except for the visual effects. Instead of a real time game where players control a single hero on a team of five to destroy the enemy's ancient, Underlords is a 1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1 turn based game. Players purchase Dota heroes and arrange them on a chess board. Then players are paired off to fight. Each battle is completely out the player's control. Heroes attack and use their special ability under without player input, until one team remains standing. Players who lose a battle, lose an amount from their health pool equal to the number of enemy heroes remaining. A player is eliminated when their health drops to zero. The player final standing wins the game.

There is certainly a game in Dota Underlords, but as the original name implied, the game is largely automated. The player chooses which heroes to purchase, how to arrange them, and what items to equip, but battle are preprogrammed.

In conclusion, Dota Underlords is nothing like Defense of the Ancients. It is a completely different game which uses the skin of Dota, but without the core elements of laning, farming, vision, and team fighting in real time. Note: Underlords is also nothing like Chess.
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Niche
Time Played: 2 Hours

Niche, by Stray Fawn Studio, is a member of the small, but popular, genre of turn-based game about evolution. The player controls a fox-like creature separated by environmental disaster from his parents. The animal's goal is to return to its parents, but the read will shortly understand why that is absurd in the context of the mechanics. Shortly after landing on an island, the fox creature meets a female fox creature and produce offspring. The player must advance to the next island by moving his animals to the opposite shore. Each level the player can only bring a limited number of creatures, though this number changes from island to island. Animals die, leaving space for their offspring to grow up.

The core elements are collecting food, creating nests, and choosing which pairs of the strange creatures to breed. Niche brags that it includes over 100 genes to shape a species, and this feels like a big part of the problem. With that number of options they blur together. In a few hours, only one or two genetic outcomes seemed particularly beneficial, while most genes felt so incremental as to be ineffective. Like Road Redeption and Distrust, one island feels the same as another, and because they are so similar, and the tasks are so repetitive (collect, breed, feed, die, go to next island) Niche lacks momentum to encourage the player further.

In conclusion, Niche suffers from too much information, and not enough to do with it. Though the game may include a complicated genetic simulation, the outcomes are too difficult to discern, and the player spends their entire time surviving to travel to the next island, which is exactly like the one they just left, in search of their great-great-great ancestor's parents. If the game's goal was to demonstrate a realistic simulator of how evolution takes eons to create differences, the developer succeeded.

Next week, four more games I didn't finish, but want to address.

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