brandorf.com The everyday ramblings of one nerd.

Post Graduation : Wasting time playing video games.

Well you can only devote so many hours a day to job hunting. What do you do with the rest of the time you have, when you don't have any money? Well, you play games. It's been said before that books will get you through times with no money, while this is true, if you are a voracious reader like I am, you don't tend to get a very good dollar vs. entertainment time value. So let's stick to games, here's what I've been playing lately:

The Longest Journey:
A classic point-n-click adventure game, hailing from the bygone years of 2000, where adventure game like this were still relevant. I'll be honest this game has not aged well at all. However it has three things going for it that will always be relevant, regardless of how dated the graphics look. A fantastic story, superb voice acting, and some of the best writing I've seen in any game to date. Also for a point and click game, it does a good job of keeping the pixel hinting down to a minimum, and the puzzle are pretty logical.

Dreamfall : The Longest Journey:
The sequel to the Longest Journey, it's interesting that it does not follow the format of the original game. This is a 3rd person action adventure title. It continues the story where the previous game left off. It's a good game overall, the controls are a little awkward at times, and the game oddly enough includes some very broken combat and stealth mechanics. This time, however the graphics are very good, and we have a return of the excellent storytelling and voice acting that has become a hallmark of the series. I'll warn you though, the game ends in a cliffhanger and reading Ragnar Tornquist's blog, it looks like the continuation of the story, Dreamfall Chapters, may be a ways off.

The Maw
An absolutely adorable platformer with cute, likeable characters and an interesting primary mechanic of feeding the maw. The game itself is very simple, but the presentation is extremely well done. Short and a bit on the easy side, I still found it refreshing.

I've mentioned before that Steam's weekend deals are a personal weakness of mine.  I'd bought all these games off of Steam ages ago, but just now got around to actually playing them through.  I had started and stopped TLJ several times before just now finishing.  Like finishing up that stack of books you've been meaning to read it feels good to polish off some games that have been wanting your attention.  I'm almost caught up on games now.  Unless this weekend's deal on steam is too hard for me to resist.