If it seems like I’ve been absent from GameCola this summer, there’s a good reason. I’ve been doing a big summer marathon on my YouTube channel! The goal is to do fifty-five games in three months, and if that doesn’t clear out my backlog, nothing will.
I’m about 2/3 through the marathon at this point, and it’s been an interesting experience so far. Some games are popular with me, but not with viewers (Cadenza: Music, Betrayal and Death, Bravely Default, Fire Emblem Gaiden). Some games are popular with viewers, but not with me (Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, Dark Tales: Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of Red Death). And there are some games which have been on my to-do list forever, so I don’t care how popular they are. I’m just glad to be rid of them at this point. These include Royal Trouble (review written four years ago), Samantha Swift and the Mystery from Atlantis (review written five years ago) and Love and Death: Bitten (review written five years ago).
Have you ever played a game for a while, then set it aside for a week? When you start playing the game again, you have a minor sense of confusion. You kind of know where you are and what’s going on, and you kind of don’t. By game six, I started to feel that way all the time. The dozens of games have all blurred together, and now I constantly forget what’s happening in any specific game.
More and more, I’m getting stuck because I forgot something that happened ten minutes ago. And character names? Forget it. Every character is either “hero”, “villain”, or “victim”. Occasionally, there’s “helper” or “cute animal”. Good thing I’m not playing any story-heavy games that require you to remember important plot details, like who the main character is.
On a positive note, I’m getting pretty good at predicting what the puzzles will be in any particular game. I picked up a crowbar? I’m going to be opening a crate or a grate at some point. I picked up an apple? There’s got to be an animal for me to feed. I have blunt shears? I’ll need to find a whetstone, so I can sharpen the shears and cut through some grass.
Note to game that has three sharp inventory items, none of which can cut through a fist-sized patch of grass: You are mean.
I’m about nine games away from finishing the marathon, so I’ll keep chugging along until I’m done. Or until I collapse from exhaustion. Either way, it’ll bring an end to my videogame playing for a while.
