So why did it fail? The first and probably most obvious reason is the fact that I'm a dad now. Being a dad reduces my stream hours a fair bit even at the weekends so while in previous years I would maybe go from like, 6am to midnight, this year I'd have to do 9am to 6pm and then 6pm to 11pm. That's a whole bunch of hours, even an entire games worth of hours in some cases to get shit done. Now while it would be easy to scapegoat my 1 year old if I'm being honest I don't think I could have pulled it off this year anyway because I'm an idiot. In previous years I have put short indie horror games in the list to account for the fact that Monday-Friday I have to do my 9-6 job but this year I put far too many big boys on there. Resident Evil 3, Fatal Frame, Bioshock, Fear 2, Manhunt, Disaster Report, what the fuck was I thinking. Then I also got sort of blindsided by games that I thought would be a bit shorter that ended up taking way more time like Tormented Souls, FOBIA and Hollowbody. My impression going in was that they were short and they were short in the sort of "6-10" hour definition and not the "1-2 indie experience" that I was thinking. My fault for not doing the research in enough detail.
But enough about my failure. More importantly, how were the fucking games? Well good, mostly. Stuff like Fatal Frame and Bioshock were in there because I already knew they were good and I wanted an excuse to replay them. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed Resident Evil 3 actually. Usually when I have played that game in the past its because I've been marathoning 1-3 back to back and by the time I hit 3 I'm burnt out. Playing it fresh gave me a new perspective on it and while it's still sort of frustrating and feels like an expansion rather than a proper sequel, I liked it a lot more than I usually do.
Then there were the first plays like Disaster Report which I really enjoyed although I have played later games in the series and enjoyed those so I sort of knew I'd like that one. Crow Country was also a great old school survival horror throwback with a cool visual style. Tormented Souls I liked less but still thought was pretty solid. I really enjoyed the fact that someone was doing the modern day "rendered" backgrounds thing because I love pre-rendered backgrounds of old and I wish more people would make really crisp, detailed shit on modern tech. That technique is seen as "dated" though and isn't used so much so big props to Tormented for doing a take on it. Of course, I cannot mention the great games from the horror games I finished without mentioning Faith. Absolute belter of a game despite the fact that it looks like an Atari2600 game. Interesting plot, actual effective horror, some decent replayability that I'm excited to go back to offline, absolutely a contender for best game of the marathon.
Finally there were the stinkers. Moons of Madness was a pathetic and boring foray into Lovecraft. Hollowbody was a complete snoozefest which is crazy considering how much it was copying the homework of much better games. Finally there was FOBIA which I won't go into detail on here because that might be one of the contenders for worst games I have ever played in my life and therefore I need to save all my bile for the blog post its going to get soon.
Just because horror month is over, doesn't meat that I'm just giving up on that playlist though. It's being incorporated into the regular schedule and played to completion. My weekends will also continue to be long horror streams until it's done so tune in over at Twitch or Youtube to check it out. The one good thing about failing the marathon is that the last game on the list is Deadly Premonition 2 and while before I was planning to b-line it to the end to make pace, now that I've failed I can kick back and engage with more of it's content, which I think is a much better way to do my first playthrough.
Good times were had, more to come
www.twitch.tv/taurinensis
No comments:
Post a Comment