My Laptop Hates These Games – November 2017

Well, I suspected this was coming, but my laptop is currently knocking on death’s door. Which totally makes sense, seeing how out-of-date it is and old in technology years and running Windows 10 with all its little might despite being designed to probably never do so. Anyways, I’ve been slowly backing files up and using an even older, less technologically advanced laptop in the meantime, one which sees a lot of error message pop-ups upon booting to the desktop and also doesn’t like to play many games built in Unity. Granted, it can play some things, like Samorost 3 and Mythic Wonders: The Philosopher’s Stone and others, but not everything. So at least this brand new feature of mine can continue marching forward because there’s always a laptop out there, hating on games.

Actually, no. This may or may not be the last edition of My Laptop Hates These Games, as I’m getting a shiny new laptop soon. In fact, it might have even arrived by the time this post goes up. Now, I went with one that was more focused on running my drawing tablet and art programs than playing big AAA games, as I’ll save those grandiose experiences for the consoles. Still, we’ll see if it is able to run the miscellaneous indie thing here and there. Stay tuned regardless to see if this feature runs once more at the end of December.

Onward though to the few games I tried to play this month, but was unable to…

Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms

I’ve become less enamored with clickers as time goes on, and they really need to do something to hold my attention or come at the concept of an idle game from a new perspective. Like Plantera, which asks you to be more involved in the going-ons of your growing garden. I don’t know if Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, an official Dungeons & Dragons idle clicker game, does any of that, as the game simply refuses to run. According to its description, this freebie challenges players to assemble a party of champions and master the art of formation strategy. I assume there’s some clicking involved.

Over the Moonlight

When I tried to launch Over the Moonlight, I immediately got an error message that says the game I’m trying to run requires a 64bit version of Windows. Huh. It also then provided a link to some information about acquiring a refund, but I’m pretty sure this was a free download on the Steam store and so no biggie though it seemed like a neat and calm walking simulator through a purple-and-yellow landscape at night.

I Am Here

I Am Here, not to be mixed up with I’m Still Here which I played earlier this year, was a big download, which turned into a big letdown after not getting it to run after all that effort. Also, it’s a narrative driven exploration game focusing on mental health and social change, something not touched on enough in games of all shapes and sizes. According to its description, you play as Karen, a successful writer in her earlier days, as she searches for her missing partner. To do this, you’ll explore your surroundings to experience memories of her past and discover the struggles Karen and her partner faced as a gay couple in the 1960s. I might try to revisit this on my forthcoming newer laptop because the subject matter and look of the game call out to me greatly.

Forever Space

Forever Space from Pinhead Games looks like a somewhat traditional point-and-click adventure game with a definitely unique style to it. There’s cartoony mixed with 3D environments. Greg Winston and four other crew mates begin a volunteer work program on Space Station Capricorn, but it doesn’t take long before they notice something isn’t right and the station’s Overseers become difficult to find. This evidently results in the crew becoming suspicious of one another. The plot sounds intriguing, and I love me an adventure game set not on the planet Earth, but this refused to run, though I was able to listen to some of its audio against a black screen before uninstalling the whole thing. Guess we’ll never know if it was more than paranoia.

—

My Laptop Hates These Games takes a quick look at the titles that kind of, only sort of run or don’t run at all on my ASUS laptop. Here’s hoping that some of these, specifically the ones that looked interesting, come to console down the road. Y’know, those gaming machines where nothing ever goes wrong and every game runs perfectly without ever crashing or freezing or glitching out. Maybe I’ll play these there or in 2056 when I get a new laptop that is, even at that point, still somewhat obsolete.

My Laptop Hates These Games – August 2017

Hi, everyone. One of my goals for 2015–yup, sadly, still working on promises from yesteryears because that’s the kind of special slacker I am–was to come up with a new feature for Grinding Down, and it only took me about eight or nine months into 2017 to figure out what I wanted though it does kind of go hand in hand with resolution #3 for this year about clearing out some of my Steam backlog. Either way, I done did it.

Welcome to My Laptop Hates These Games, wherein I take a real short glance at games I tried to run on my less-than-steller ASUS laptop from 2010-ish, which is totally not built to play big games, but has, in the past, been fine with things like Broken Age, Transistor, and Gone Home. I was even able to run meatier operations like Red Faction: Armageddon and Bulletstorm, just with the settings turned super low. Some games operate better than others, and some simply don’t run at all. At least through this feature, I’ll find out if they work or don’t work sooner than later, and my goal is to present to you the exact experience I had, from hitting the executable to deleting all the files.

Okay, let’s dig in.

Maui

I’ve never even played a single second of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker–I know, shame on me–but I already completely understand that this is the look and feel Maui is going for in its execution. This is a free action-adventure game based on Hawaiian mythology, which is something unique to the videogames playing field. I got through the tutorial just fine, learning how to switch my faith to different gods for unique powers, but then the mission where you need to find a banana brought everything to a crawl stuck inside a glacier covered in molasses. Unfortunately, there are no settings to change things, and so this got deleted without ever finding that lost banana.

Escape the Game: Intro

Another freebie on Steam that I probably installed because it kind of looked like Thomas Was Alone. Unfortunately, I can’t say if Escape the Game: Intro played the same way or not because, after seeing the title screen and clicking start, the game does a fake crash à la Fez…ironically leading to a real crash to desktop. I was able to replicate this three times before I gave up. I guess in my own special way I did manage to escape the game.

My Time at Portia

My Time at Portia looks real fine. My love and fascination for quirky farming simulations continues to grow, having enjoyed Stardew Valley and Slime Rancher a whole bunch recently, and this one looks to be almost a mixture of the two styles. It’s set in a post-apocalypse setting, but a splashy, kaleidoscopic one. The player starts a new life in a town on the edge of civilization called Portia by building a workshop and creating helpful items with relics from the past. The goal of the game is to make the workshop as big as possible…I think. Even with the graphic settings turned to “fastest,” this was next to impossible to play. I knew I was in for a rocky time when the in-game cutscene staggered forward at a crawl. Gaining control of the main character was worse. Here’s hoping that this too comes to consoles like similar titles as of late.

—

My Laptop Hates These Games takes a quick look at the titles that kind of, only sort of run or don’t run at all on my ASUS laptop. Here’s hoping that some of these, specifically the ones that looked interesting, come to console down the road. Y’know, those gaming machines where nothing ever goes wrong and every game runs perfectly without ever crashing or freezing or glitching out. Maybe I’ll play these there or in 2056 when I get a new laptop that is, even at that point, still somewhat obsolete.

The sounds, saunter, and signing off of the Steam summer sale

This has been my first Steam summer sale. And by that I mean the first summer to come around where I have a computer capable of running some videogames. Not all of them, mind you, as my ASUS laptop can only do so much, but most, and most definitely all the indie or previously downloadable-only ones, which I prefer over the AAA titles. For those, like Batman: Arkham City and whatever the latest Assassin’s Creed game is called, I’d rather play them on my Xbox 360 than have to deal with slow downloads, configuring a controller for my laptop, and tweaking settings to get it playable.

And so, here are all the darlings I was able to snag during the crazy affair:

• Terraria (purchased for $2.49)
• Portal 2 (purchased for $4.99)
• Tiny Bang Story (purchased for $2.50)
• Trine 2 (purchased for $3.74)
• Fallout: New Vegas – Ultimate Edition (purchased for $9.99)
• Stacking (purchased for $3.74)
• Torchlight (purchased for $3.74)
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (gifted to me by Greg Noe when on sale for $2.49)
• Monkey Island Complete Pack (purchased for $8.74)
• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition (purchased for $2.49)

That’s a total of $42.42 spent, which is not bad. Also, the answer to life, the universe, and everything…twice. I think that is a win no matter how you look at it.

Of my new purchases, I’ve played a few, but only sparingly. I loaded up Terraria to see if it worked and…yup, it did. Think that game requires some time and devotion to get into. I also did the same with Fallout: New Vegas, just to see how it runs on my laptop; fine, fine, and it is quite a change to go from watching a loading screen on the Xbox 360 for minutes to blinking and missing them on the PC. The biggest reason for buying that game all over again–not just because I love it so–is mods, so I’ll have to look into which ones are the bees’ knees. Stacking‘s a lot of fun, and you’ll be able to read more about that once I finish up my coverage for The First Hour. And then there’s Torchlight, which I’ve fallen back into hard. You see, when I first played it on the ol’ Xbox 360, I struggled with being able to read anything, and so it was mostly guesswork as to what items and weapons to equip, taking away a lot of fun inventory management. Yes, I said fun inventory management. But on the PC, everything is spectacular, and all that text is mine to devour and ponder and make decisions upon. I’m loving it all over again. Plus, it was a whole lot cheaper than buying Diablo III.

I hope to try out the other games I got before the world implodes, but that’s probably just wishful thinking. If you can help, please help.

So, how’d you make out with this year’s Steam summer sale? Share your purchases and good deals below!

Glitch might be my very first MMORPG

I had to wait a full 24 hours, but I finally got my invite to Glitch last night. When I first signed up, the message said it would be only “a few hours,” but a sudden increase in interest lead the folks behind Glitch–Tiny Speck, Inc. and some of the founders of Flickr–to extend the wait to not overload the system. Okay, understood. Can’t really complain too much about the wait considering Glitch is a free, browser-based MMORPG. Don’t have to download anything, don’t have to pay for anything. And it’s pretty good, too, considering I don’t really love MMORPGs–I just have to remember to close down all other open applications and ignore the lure of checking my email every few minutes, as between those two I crashed the game several times. My laptop is certainly on the way out…

So, what is Glitch about? Well, let’s use the creators’ words first, and then I’ll see if I can figure it out any better for y’all:

Glitch is a web-based massively-multiplayer game which takes place inside the minds of eleven peculiarly imaginative Giants. You choose how to grow and shape the world: building and developing, learning new skills, collaborating or competing with everyone else in one enormous, ever-changing, persistent world.

Hmm…basically, you are you, and you live inside the brainspace of one of eleven Giants. You will then help that world grow, going on quests, learning skills, interacting with other…um, Glitchers. There’s very little warfare, instead focusing on social aspects and friendly topics. For instance, a lot of early missions in RPGs (and MMORPGs, from what I can tell) involve slaughtering some kind of weak animal X number of times. Oh, new adventurer, eh? Go kill ten rats to prove your worth. Oh, fresh off the boat? Go eviscerate fifteen boars and wear their skin as a cloak to show me you mean business. In Glitch, one of the first quests you get involves petting six pigs. I liked that. I also like petting trees.

So, yeah, it’s a light-hearted affair, but I think that’s good. Plus, the whole “inside of the brains of Giants” is unique enough to really let the art style go wild. So far, I’ve explored caves, lush forests, wild fields, and I’m sure there’s even more. Each hubworld is made up of dozens of mini sections, all brimming with people or things to interact with. There’s a lot to learn, such as skills and what each item does and why it is important to collect butterfly milk or eggs from an egg plant (not to be confused with eggplant), but everything is gradual.

And this is what I look like, after tinkering around a bit with the avatar customization options:

Since the game is browser-based, your profile is always kept up-to-date, which is great as a refresher on things you’ve done and things you can do. I never used this feature too much with Dragon Age: Origins, but since Glitch plays within the very same browser that’s getting updated, it’s much easier to explore. Right now, I’m choosing the next skill to learn (Animal Kinship III?)–and I’m not even technically playing the game.

Easy to get into (well, once you get the invite), friendly, fun, with lots to do, Glitch might actually be the first MMORPG I’ve liked and continued to play. So long as I like and continue to play it, that is. I don’t have any buddies playing with me because I refused to connect with Facebook, so it’s solo me in a world of many, and while one always levels up fast in the beginning with four dozen things to do, I’m curious as to how long Glitch can hold out for. Granted, it’s adorable graphics are more than enough to keep me walking left to right, right to left, until every section of every world has been scoured.