Preplay : Galactic Civilizations I : Ultimate edition

Two months ago, steamgifts user UselessB gifted me Galactic Civilizations I : Ultimate Edition. (GCIUE) As a way of thanking him I gave the game a high spot on my backlog. GCIUE was released in 2012 and includes Galactic Civilizations I (2003) and the Altarian Prophecy expansion pack (2004). The 2003 release of Galactic Civilizations was in its turn a Windows port of the in 1994 released Galactic Civilizations by Stardock. So despite its 2012 release, the game I'm about to play is actually quite old.

This tells me several things. For starters I'll probably need some time adjusting to old game play and graphics as is often the case with older games. But more importantly it tells me that this is a game that must have a dedicated fan base. Porting a 9 year old game to a new system is one thing, but rereleasing that same game another 8 years later implies that this game has a special place in someone's heart.

I have never played GCIUE though, nor had I ever heard of it before receiving it from UselessB. A little bit of research made it clear that this is an RTS, something that I already suspected. Another thing that was quite obvious from the title is that this game is set in space.
For certain people that combination would be an instant win but I'm not one of those people. Although I played some RTS games over the years, I never really got to the bottom of any of them and I wouldn't consider myself an RTS enthusiast.
As for the setting,  I've seen the Star Wars movies and I've dabbled in the Star Trek universe but space fantasy never really did it for me until I played the first Mass Effect. So setting a piece of entertainment in space isn't necessarily a selling point for me.

What did catch my attention while researching this game was the praise the AI of this game got. Apparently GCIUE's AI is its most noteworthy feature because the computer players play surprisingly realistic and intelligent. I'm curious if I will notice any of this or if by now the bar of AI systems has been raised too much for this one to remain exceptional.

So where does that leave my expectations? I'm already sure that this game is a gem within its genre if fans have been supporting it for nearly two decades. I'm afraid that this relatively high age might get in the way for new players though and I'm hoping that Stardock has made some changes to the interface in order to make it more compliant with current industry standards. Even if they did I'm not sure if it will be enough to make me like the game. RTS games aren't part of my comfort zone and this game will have to be really good if it wants to win me over.

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Postplay : Dear Esther

Dear Esther, it took me a few moments to realize where I was after I had opened my eyes. I could hear the waves breaking on the rocks behind me while I watched the lighthouse and a cold onshore breeze played with my clothes. The loud call of a gull made me turn my head and in the distance I saw a blinking red light that grabbed my attention. It was somehow calling me, so I put my left foot in front of my right and started my hike towards its bright, flickering promise.

The chinese room's Dear Esther is a hard thing to talk about for multiple reasons.
First of it's difficult to say anything meaningful about the game or show screenshots without getting into spoiler territory. The value of Dear Esther relies solely on atmosphere and story, so giving away anything about it could have an impact on your experience. I believe this is the reason why most reviews remain vague about what Dear Esther actually is and I'm afraid I'll have to do the same.

Another difficulty lies in the nature of the beast. As mentioned in my preplay, calling Dear Esther a game is debatable. It's difficult to say whether or not Dear Esther is a game because it's very hard to define what a game is. Personally I tend to go with the definition Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman have offered in their book Rules of play.

A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that result in a quantifiable outcome.

By this definition Dear Esther wouldn't be a game because if we take this definition apart it says that, in order to be a game, software needs a player, a conflict or challenge to overcome, a set of rules that has been conveyed to the player and a quantifiable outcome to determine whether or not a player has won. If these conditions aren't met than you are just playing, not playing a game.
I like to use the example of throwing a ball to differentiate between playing and a game. If you aimlessly throw a ball, you are playing. If you however try to throw a ball through a hoop and state that you win if you get the ball through the hoop in three or less tries, you are playing a game. You have created a set of rules, a series of obstacles and a winning condition that elevates playing with a ball to playing a game that involves throwing a ball.

I won't go any deeper into this because a lot of people have their own ideas about what is or isn't a game and a lot of examples can be given that don't exactly fit the definition I tend to go with but could still be considered games. Dear Esther is one of those fringe cases and thereby it is hard to talk about it with other gamers without getting into a discussion about the meaning of the word game. Throughout the game there's no interaction with your environment, items or NPC's. You go forward without a clear goal and there never is any real obstacle in your way to overcome. To make things simple I'll refer to Dear Esther as a game throughout this post but feel free to think of it as a piece of entertainment software instead.

The weird thing about Dear Esther though is that being a game is one of its biggest flaws. I have seldom played or seen anything as immersive as Dear Esther. The environments are fantastical but believable. The sound design is phenomenal and the music ties it all together.
I've been to Iceland last summer and one of the things I loved most about that country is the feeling you get when you turn a corner and find yourself looking at something hauntingly beautiful. It's a rare feeling and to my amazement Dear Esther succeeds in recreating it from time to time.
But this immersion gets broken as soon as you realize that you are playing a game. At one point I wanted to have a look at the environment from the top of a hill. I started walking towards it but found myself stuck on a small rock that acted as an invisible wall. All of a sudden I was pulled out of the world Dear Esther had created for me and found myself behind my computer playing a game. That's what I mean when I say that being a game is one of Dear Esther's problems.

When going over my notes I can clearly see the moment where I stopped looking at Dear Esther as a piece of software. I start out writing about technicalities like how many chapters are in the game, how the controls work or invisible walls. At one point though, my notes change and I'm talking about the sound, the music, the feeling I get when walking into a cave. That's when the game starts shining, the moment you forget that you are playing it and just start experiencing what it has to offer.

As I said in the beginning of this post, Dear Esther relies solely on atmosphere and story. By now I think I've made clear that I found the atmosphere astonishing so let's talk about the story.
Dear Esther's story is told by a narrator and progresses as you reach certain points in the environment. It's style is rather poetic and don't expect to have all the answers by the time the credits roll. It is a story meant to make you think long after you're done playing the game and it's open to interpretation and debate.
I'm not going to pretend that I understood everything the game wanted to tell me and I'm honestly left rather confused than anything else, but the story does fit the atmosphere of the game perfectly and adds to the feeling of wonder you get while playing.

There are some more obvious story beats that give you a basic understanding of what is going on and these are often told by elements in the environment rather than speech. One big WTF moment in particular gives you a big clue to what is actually happening over the course of the game but you'll have to fill in the gaps yourself. Some of these elements are randomized making it so that you'll never get the full story when only going through the experience once and this opens the story line up for even more discussion.

Overall I think The chinese room has made exactly what they intended to with Dear Esther. It's an interesting approach to gaming that could be an inspiration for many developers if nothing else.
I have to warn you if you're interested in trying it though, it's very short. I finished it in just over 70 minutes and I was taking my sweet time writing down notes and searching for good spots to take screenshots.
Despite the fact that some parts of the story are randomized I don't suspect many people go through it twice. This makes it hard to justify the €7,99 price tag. The game has been on sale many times before so I suspect that it will be again in the future. When it does I recommend anyone who's into gaming to give it a go. Dear Esther is something unique and it will give you a new look at our much beloved medium for sure.

You can find my Preplay for Dear Esther here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

Next time I'll be playing Galactic Civilizations I: Ultimate Edition

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Preplay : Dear Esther

When reviews for Dear Esther started hitting the internet back in February 2012 the game immediately grabbed my attention. They described something new, something different and I'm always on the lookout for these kinds of innovative experiments. 

After doing some research it turned out that experiment was the right word to describe Dear Esther. It was originally developed and released by Dan Pinchbeck as a Half Life 2 mod in 2008. Dan is a researcher at the University of Portsmouth. The mod was created to explore experimental game play and storytelling and was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
When it was clear that the mod was becoming a success, a team of game industry professionals was added to the project in order to make it a standalone product.

Dear Esther is more of an experience rather than a traditional game from what I can gather reading reviews and looking at screenshots. It's been a while since its release but I remember discussions about whether or not it even should be called a game. These discussions only spiked my interest even more so when the game went on sale I bought it without hesitation.

Since then there has always been one game or another keeping me away from playing Dear Esther. I'm still really curious about what it is and I'm glad that I'm finally committed to find out. When looking at the screenshots they all seem to come out of a backpacking tourists' photo album. The only thing I seem to find are pictures of scenery. This leads me to believe that there will be little to none interaction with other characters. As I have tried to stay clear of substantial spoilers I'm not sure if there even are any real characters in the game.

My guess is that I'll be playing some kind of stranded survivor and that my goal will be to find out where I am. Maybe my character will be writing down what he sees in letters to a girl named Esther. This is pure speculation from my part though and I'm curious to see if my guess is anywhere near the truth.

It's fair to say that I really don't know what to expect. Dear Esther might be one of the best or worst experiences I'll have this year. But whatever the case may be, I'm sure it will be interesting. I love it when developers take a chance and try something that's off the beaten path. That in and of itself already gives Dear Esther a head start in my opinion.

I have finished this game by now, read the Postplay here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

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Postplay : Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD

In 2012 developer Robomodo released Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD (THPS HD), a game that set out to celebrate the heydays of the Tony Hawk series. If you've read my preplay for this game then you'll know that I have warm memories of those early THPS games. This made me a bit anxious to start playing THPS HD. You'll find out if my fears were grounded when you read on, but one thing is for sure, my love for the source material made this game one of the hardest for me to review so far. This has resulted in a longer post than usual, please keep in mind that everything is written from the viewpoint of an avid THPS 1, 2, 3, 4 & Underground 1 fan.

Career and single run are the only two modes available when you first start the game. I went into career because that's where the crux of the game has always been in the past. While going through the skater selection, I expected to find a custom skater option but to my surprise there wasn't any. It's kind of a shame as this has always been a fun part when starting out with a new THPS game and these series are one of few where you actually get to see your avatar from all angles during gameplay.
But I suppose a custom skater isn't that crucial to the experience so I went on choosing Tony Hawk as my partner in crime. Being that his name is on the main menu I guessed he's the guy to go with.

The first map on my plate was Warehouse, the very first level of THPS1. It only took me one run to achieve enough of the goals to go on to the next level. This told me that the controls of the game are solid and that 13 year old muscle memory is still hidden somewhere in my body. I was amazed at how quickly I picked up all of my old tricks and after just one run I was already landing decent combo's. THPS HD was off to a good start. 

Speaking of unlocking, there's been a crucial change to how this works. In THPS 2 you unlocked levels by spending cash earned by completing goals and collecting dollar notes spread throughout the maps. This was a cool system because it allowed you to spend more time in your favorite levels, collecting every last dollar note, while being able to get through your least favorite maps fast as it didn't matter in which level you collected the cash.

In THPS HD however, levels are unlocked by completing a set amount of goals in the previous level. These goals do not add up so it doesn't matter if you complete 4 or 10 goals in Warehouse, you'll unlock School II and that's it. You'll earn more cash if you complete more goals of course but that's only going to buy you stats and skateboards.
Marseille has always been in my top five of THPS maps and it happens to be the last one you unlock in THPS HD. I had to complete 6 goals in Downhill Jam to unlock it, which is one of my least favorite maps of THPS 2. I don't really get why the original system had to be changed but again, this doesn't ruin the experience.

Perhaps I'm only picking these systems apart because my nostalgia is getting in the way so let's sum up things that did satisfy the thirteen year old fanboy in me.

One of my favorite things in THPS games was the way collectibles were laid out. If you were collecting the letters of SKATE, spray cans or liberty bells they were always put in place in such a way that you could get them all by following a specific line of tricks throughout the level. This was a great way to learn how to perform big combo's while traversing the map. The same thing still applies to THPS HD because all the collectibles can be found where they originally were. This means that veterans will have very little challenge with these goals but new players are still getting the same benefits as of old and that's for the best in my opinion.
A smaller touch that I really appreciated was replacing the secret tapes by secret DVD's. To me that's proof that Robomodo really loved the original games as well.

As briefly mentioned before the board shop is back as well. It isn't as elaborate as in some of the previous games but it's a nice touch and it introduces at least a minimum amount of customization. 

Another familiar screen is the stats screen where you can trade your hard earned cash to enhance your skater's abilities and of course you're also able to buy tricks and map them to whichever button combination you want. This allows you to configure the skater towards your own play style. If you're someone like me that likes to string together huge combo's using manuals and rails then you'll want to invest in your balance instead of your air time and spend money on rail tricks instead of grabs.

I also got a big hit of nostalgia from the music. I still have the THPS2 soundtrack stuck in my head and whenever I hear any of those songs, my instant reaction is calling out that it's a song from that soundtrack. This game includes a lot of those old songs but introduces some new ones as well and for the better part I enjoyed them.

The choice of maps is the most important thing for an old THPS fan of course. School 2, Marseille, Warehouse and Venice Beach shine as they have always done and it was great kickflipping TC's roof gap and ollieing the magic bum again.

Some of the choices are a bit weird. Warehouse and Hanger are both included while the latter is essentially an updated version of the first. There also are a couple of downhill maps and while I'm sure there's someone out there that loves these, I never really enjoyed those.

As I feared I'm already over 1000 words in and I barely said a thing about what's new in THPS HD.

For starters, it's HD and it shows. I like the way this game looks and the changes made to the HUD are for the better. Every now and then the environment doesn't look 100% sharp but unless you're looking for it you mostly won't notice this while you're planning your next jump.

What you will notice is that there are some physics bugs from time to time. Luckily they tend not to occur while riding but when you bail, your skater often flies off at high speeds. This happened once every few minutes but as it doesn't really affect your score I found it rather amusing.

It can't be all good though and THPS HD makes a big error in my book. There is nothing in the game that tries to increase its replay value. Every once in a while there's a hint on the loading screen that informs you that "stuff" will be unlocked once you complete every single goal in the game with every single skater. But even when ignoring the fact that "stuff" is awfully vague, this is a lazy way to get your players to grind out the career over and over again. This can only lead to a group of bored and frustrated players and unless that "stuff" is an actual pot of gold that's being dropped of in your back yard those players will be lost forever to the THPS franchise.

Another thing that made me come back to the older games over and over again was competing with my friends. There were a lot of split screen modes like tag, horse or score runs that kept the game interesting and gave you a reason to get better at it. Later on this was even enhanced when the online mode was introduced on the PS2. I remember buying an external network adapter so I could play THPU online.

In THPS HD however there's no form of multiplayer to be found, not even locally. For me this is simply unexplainable. There's only so much to be done in single player until you want to test your skills against other human players.
When you wanted to practice in the old games you would do this in single run by trying to beat your own high score. This was a great way to track your progress. It's baffling to me that even this local leaderboard isn't present. THPS HD uses Steam achievements and I would have suspected that I could see how well I was doing in relation to other players worldwide. As it turns out I can't even see if I'm doing any better than yesterday unless I write down my scores on a post-it.

This lack of multiplayer and leaderboards has resulted in me not knowing what to do after playing the game for four hours. Of course this has to do with me knowing every map by heart and unlocking all of them within an hour and a half, but this has always been the case when replaying THPS games and it never got in the way of having fun before. 

THPS HD provides some additional single player modes like hawkman and big head survival that add a bit of fun, but these won't grab you for hours on end. I ended up achievement hunting to get to my five hour mark and I must admit I had some fun with that.There are a couple of creative achievements but I can imagine that this would have only lasted me an hour more before it ran dry as well.

This has been a long post and it's still not easy for me to give my definite opinion about the game. It is by all means a well done homage to THPS and I believe Robomodo has done the franchise justice. But the lack of replay value makes this a hard sell. Fans of the series will probably have a fun night or two with this game and I believe new players will get more hours out of career mode than I did.
I'm just not sure if this is enough to justify the €11,99 it's going for on Steam though. If you have the game in your library it is certainly worth a play and I believe that, should it drop to €5 during a sale, this would be a better price for what's in this product.
The THPS series was a product of it's time and this remake gives a little taste of that for sure, but i'm left hungry for more while the game has nothing more to offer.

You can find my Preplay for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

Next time I'll be playing Dear Esther

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Preplay : Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD

The year is 2000. Blink 182, the Bomfunk MC's and the Bloodhound Gang fill the radiowaves while Johnny Knoxville and his friends set the youth up to no good with their hit show Jackass. I just turned thirteen and I'm sitting in the passenger seat of my dad's car taking in every word of advertisement that's written on the big cardboard box that contains my newest game. After months and months of playing only one level of that game, the day has finally come that I have saved up enough money to buy the full version. I still remember where I bought it. I still remember where we parked. I still remember it being a nice and sunny day and I still remember how I felt while sitting there in that car. This was the day that I bought Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and it's a day I will never forget because that was the very first game I bought with my own savings.

The Tony Hawk series was created in 1999 in response to a worldwide revival of skateboarding culture. For many of my friends it was a way to get to know more about the skaters they saw in Thrasher Magazine and get familiar with names of tricks.

The game wasn't a realistic depiction of what skateboarding is but seemed to capture the feeling you fantasize about while skateboarding. It was a power fantasy more then a simulation. Kids went out on the streets with their skateboards during the day and played THPS when it got dark out. Their love for the sport translated into a deep passion towards the game.

For me the opposite happened and I like to believe that I'm not alone in this. THPS2 is the reason I bought a skateboard. After only a few days of playing the game I started buying skate magazines. A couple of weeks later my regular shoes had been replaced with és sneakers and yet another couple of weeks later I was practicing my ollie in front of my house on my own board. Although I only stand on a skateboard on rare occasion nowadays, I still love the feeling of riding one and I would never have known it if it wasn't for THPS2.

I kept playing the THPS games up till 2003's Tony Hawk's Underground. I still liked that game but somehow the magic was gone. I had grown up and my interests had shifted to different things while the THPS franchise had grown greedier and the downfall had begun. In the course of the years the franchise had lost the ability to embody what skating was all about and instead changed its focus to ridiculous story modes, over the top maps and expensive peripherals.

By the time Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD was announced on the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards show, promising to bring back the best op THPS, THPS2 and THPS3, I had lost all interest in the series and din't even consider picking it up. But only a few months after being released it went on sale on Steam and nostalgia got the better of me. I have played a little bit of it and I remember having a good enough time but I haven't given it enough attention to form a definite opinion. 

I hope the game will be able to bring back some of what I loved about the THPS series when I was younger. I realize a lot of that was formed by zeitgeist and puberty though so I'm not getting my hopes up too high. I know I wont be blown away by this game as I have been by it's predecessors but I do expect it to hit enough of those notes to honor those memories.

I have finished this game by now, read the Postplay here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

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Postplay : Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge

As we all know some animals don't get along. Mice and elephants, cats and dogs and Rihanna and Chris Brown are just some examples. Another one is rats and cats.
While humans might have a tendancy to favor the latter, making them the heroes of the internet and giving them all the cheeseburgers, it's understandable that rats' aren't so keen on our four legged overlords, given their tendency to kill and eat them.
In Bad Rats: the Rat's Revenge (BRTRR) by invent4 we get a peak at the rats' side of the fight and learn that it mostly consists of sloppy attempts to kill their enemies one cat at a time.

But let's not jump the gun here. Allow me to explain what BRTRR is.
Bad rats is a physics game in which your goal is to hit a murdering device with a ball. In order to do this you place different rats and objects in the level. Each rat has it's own function. One hits the ball with a bat, another pulls it towards him with a vacuum cleaner and some simply blow up to lift the ball upwards. When the ball reaches the device, it switches on and kills the unfortunate cat standing next to it. These devices vary from chainsaws to microwaves, heavy weights, guns and so on. On occasion the animation associated with killing the cat can be funny but overall it's really goofy and over the top.

The basic premise reminds me of Armadillo Run, a game I played a few years ago and that I absolutely loved. In Armadillo Run you have to get a curled up armadillo into a blue circle and it has to stay within that circle for a couple of seconds. You create a path by building structures out of metal, rope, suspensions and so on. What's great about Armadillo Run is that the physics engine is 100% reliable and after a few levels you've got a good sense of what will work. This allows the game to focus on finding the solution to a problem and makes it easy to implement that solution.

It's a shame the same can't be said about BRTRR. Most puzzles are easy enough to see a possible solution as soon as the level is loaded. You place the rats and objects and try out your setup and you get all smug when you see that you're nearly there in just one try. Only the final rat didn't blow up quiet as you envisioned it so you move him a couple of inches and try again. To your surprise the first rat misses it's swing this time and the ball doesn't even get halfway the level. You don't change a thing and try this setup another 15 times, getting 15 different results and eventually the ball hits the chainsaw, the cat dies and a small part of you has died with it. On to the next level!

Sadly enough this is the norm rather than the exception while playing BRTRR and it's easily my number one frustration with the game. Physics engines are dangerous beasts. Even big developers like Bethesda can't prevent a mammoth from flying of now and again. That being said, when your entire game concept revolves around physics you'd better make damn sure they aren't a hindrance to the player.
In a game like BRTRR it isn't important if physics behave 100% accurate to the real world. The crucial part is that you as a player know what you can expect in order to be able to solve levels within those expectations. Part of the fun in games like Armadillo Run or even Line Rider is creating your setup piece by piece, testing it in various phases and making adjustments when needed, knowing that the parts that worked the first time will still work the 100th time assuming that you don't change anything preceding those parts.
After playing a couple of levels of BRTRR however, you expect things to behave random, taking away the temptation to find creative solutions.

On top of that BRTRR suffers from a varied assortment of bugs and mistakes. I'm sure I didn't catch 'em all but allow me to list those that I did.

• I accidentally closed the tutorial and wasn't able to restart it
• After finishing a level, the same level was loaded again
• When finishing the level again, the level I normally had to play was skipped and I went on to the next one
• A level was loaded without the HUD making it impossible to play. I couldn't access the menu using Esc and had to forcefully shutdown the game
• By lack of autosaves I had to replay a bunch of levels following that shutdown
• A wooden board got stuck in the floor making it impossible to complete the level

But there's one bug in particular that I want to give special attention to. Even though  all gameplay happens on a 2D plane, the ball often falls in front of the level for no apparent reason. I can only assume Invent4 made this game in a 3D engine using its default physics engine and has tried to limit that physics engine to a 2D plane. This might also explain why the gameplay is so unreliable.

In terms of graphics I can be brief. BRTRR doesn't look good, but its graphics fulfill their purpose. The game would not be more fun with better graphics. It's obvious BRTRR had to be made with a limited budget and I wouldn't be surprised if most of that budget was wasted on a failed attempt to fix the broken physics.
The low quality graphics aren't the only thing leading to this suspicion. I'm not a native English speaker and I'm sure a lot of what I write on this blog sounds awkward to those who are, but invent4 didn't even take the effort to use a spell checker. When releasing a game in a foreign language the least you can do is ask someone who speaks that language to correct your copy. I realize that this can be a costly affair but there's so little text in BRTRR that I can't imagine it to be too expensive.

I'm sure it's pretty obvious by now what my opinion on the game is. BRTRR is a foul piece of software and you shouldn't buy it, play it or gift it. If you do gift it to someone you are bad and you should feel bad.
Oddly enough I do see some lost potential in the game. Every now and then I got excited when a solution did work out the way I intended it on the first try. I often play games for Full Steam Ahead during lunch break and BRTRR was the first game to drum up a bunch of colleagues around my desk, proving that the basic concept has some merit to it. Saddly enough that's where all praise ends because this game was so poorly put together that invent4 should write a public apology.

You can find my Preplay for Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

Next time I'll be playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD

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Preplay : Bad rats: the Rats' Revenge

When I started Full Steam Ahead I let my friends know on Facebook. One of them, Styn, commented the following

You are crazy and you're getting Bad Rats when it's on sale on Steam!

He didn't wait that long though, a few days later I've got an email from Steam saying one of my friends had gifted me this invent4 game and I knew the only reason was to mess with me. Thanks Styn!

While looking at screenshots for this game it's obvious that Bad rats: the Rats' Revenge (BRTRR) is a budget title. It was released in 2009 but the graphical quality looks at least 5 years older. When searching Youtube for some gameplay footage the first link I found was to a video called 'Why do I own... Bad Rats'. Things aren't looking good for BRTRR.

What I can gather from the screenshots is that this is a physics game. My guess is that I'm to get the rats in a certain position in order to kill the unfortunate cat seen in the screenshots. I have played a few physics games in the past with a similar goal and I mostly enjoyed them. I like putting the solution together one piece at a time and creating my very own Rube Goldberg machines.
If the programming is bad and the physics are unreliable though the whole concept falls flat and I'm in for five hours of bugs and physics engine flipouts. Unfortunately my time preparing for this preplay has let me to believe that this will be the case as the only positive reviews I can find for this game appear to be trolls.

In all honesty I'm looking forward to my time with BRTRR in some weird way. I expect it to be an atrocity of a game but that might just make it interesting to see. You can learn a lot from good games but often times you can learn just as much from really bad ones. If by any chance I happen to find some good gameplay hidden deep within the game that would be for the best of course. But I'm a warned man and I know I'm buckling up for a bumpy ride.

I have finished this game by now, read the Postplay here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

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Full Steam Ahead : We are many

It has been over a month since I started Full Steam Ahead. I had become fed up with my ever increasing Steam backlog and felt the need to do something about it.
By now I've played four games and am ready to finish up a fifth one. I couldn't be more pleased with that result and I'm really enjoying analyzing the games I'm playing.
I would like to thank everyone who has been reading my posts so far and I appreciate the feedback I've been getting over Skype and on the Steamgifts forums.
This kind of response inspires me to continue my project.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said : "There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again."
This couldn't be more the case for the basic premise of this blog. Since starting Full Steam Ahead I have met numerous people that are dealing with their Steam backlog in their own way.
With this post I'd like to share some of those projects.

When I posted about Full Steam Ahead on Steamgifts the first comment I got was "Why not join the Backlog Attack group?"
As the name gives away, Backlog Attack is a Steam group with only one goal : getting rid of the Steam Backlog. In order to achieve this each member of the group has to at least play one game a month and write a review about it.
This review is posted as a discussion on the group page in order to start a meaningful conversation about the game. If different people finish the same game, they all add their review to one discussion about that game.
In my opinion this group has three strong points.

• It keeps you stimulated to keep playing even if you're having a hard time with a game
• When sales come around you can go into the discussions and see what games are worth your money
• You meet like minded people

Is asked creator of the group AgeOfArmageddon why he started the group.

The idea originally began as a "30 games in 30 days" forum challenge I had setup for myself .
The idea was to do a quick impression/review for 1 new game every day, with the 30 games chosen by forum members.
Being that it was SteamGifts, I was also giving away a new game with each review.
Unfortunately, being that it was SteamGifts; the thread died out after some time, with people coming to enter the giveaways but no longer commenting at all.
There was a silver lining however; many posts indicated they thought the idea was quite cool, or wish they had done it themselves. One person even copied the thread idea and did his own.
Seeing this as an opportunity; I decided to make a group where I could continue my efforts, but do so in the company of other like-minded individuals.

When I asked what he believes to be the best aspect of the group he answered :

Chronicling my efforts to clear out my old games has been fun; as has reading the reviews of others. I think the best aspect would be the community that has formed around it.
I am often in group chat, and even after a few months; it is generally quite active.
Meeting new and interesting people who share a passion is always a fantastic outcome  of a project like this.

Backlog attack is a closed group though, so you can only get in by means of invitation and AgeOfArmageddon wants to keep it limited to around 100 people. If you're interested in joining though, there's no harm in asking of course.

I've been a big fan of Giant Bomb for years now. I love the site, the content, the crew and the community.
One of the things I like most about the site is that it puts a spotlight on original stuff created by that community. When I went over to the site a few weeks ago I saw this description in one of the community spotlight slots

Steam Completionist, Do you have way too many games in your Steam backlog? Well, Bio2hazard has designed a stylish website to organize, analyze, and destroy that pile of shame.

This immediately caught my attention of course so I went into the forum thread and found that Giant Bomb user Bio2hazard had become inspired by a Reddit post to create an informative and user friendly overview of your steam backlog.
I highly recommend every Steam user to check it out on www.steamcompletionist.net. You simply log on with your Steam credentials and your entire library gets displayed in a very clear way. Once you have indicated which game you have finished you can designate up to five games as 'next to finish'
In addition you can view overall Steam stats, achievement stats and use the page as an alternative to the Steam Library page. Seriously, go check it out!

Now as I said, Bio2hazard was inspired by a reddit post.
This was a post by Reddit user Multitasker dealing with the exact same thing as I was.
He started finishing games and posting his findings on reddit.
If you have a minute, give the page a read. There's some good reading on there.

If you are dealing with your Steam Backlog in a specific way yourself, please let me know in the comments. I'm always glad to meet more like-minded people and perhaps I'll make another post like this if I can find more interesting backlog projects.

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

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