Going Through My Steam Library: Part 1
I know I said on my now page that I've given up video games, but I've found it difficult to do so in the past. It's easier with time, though. You go through enough games over 40 years, and you learn all of the patterns. Or at least all of the ones you're interested in.
You wouldn't know that from my current Steam account tbecause I did a big purge a while back and switched accounts. Much of my PC gaming history is lost, but I do have data going back to 2023. I thought I'd do some reviews on why I liked or disliked a game, starting from the oldest and going up to today. I'll do a few at a time.
This will also give me a chance to clean out my Steam library.
Beat Saber
Before I did massive amounts of moving, I was playing Beat Saber pretty regularly. A Vive Pro 2 was a gift to myself after I mucked out my house enough to be tolerable. I had rented it out to our roommate when I did my first moving and then had to move back in after he wouldn't pay rent. It took me a full year and over 70 contractor bags of trash to get the house habitable again before I sold it.
I sold the Vive Pro 2 to someone before I did my last round of moves, so I cannot play Beat Saber anymore without dropping a lot of cash on another VR setup. I can say that Beat Saber was a killer app for me for VR, especially modded. I have friends who still play it. If I had enough space and a room to play it in, I'd consider playing it regularly again for fitness. It is excellent for cardio.
However, besides the whole lack of space thing, it's about the only game I wanted to play regularly with it.
Corpse Party: Book of Shadows
Did not finish and refunded. I enjoyed the original Corpse Party, but this one opened with something I find extremely off-putting in my media. It opened with a pervy teenage seduction scene so I never got to the horror.
I'm way outside the demographic for anime and anime tropes, but I do like Asian horror, which is why I gave it a shot. Oh well. Still got a refund.
Cookie Clicker
Ahhh, my Skinner boxes. My numbers-go-up feels-good machines. Clicking cookies was enjoyable for a while. However, as you'll see in later posts, I like my incremental games to have a firm ending and not overstay their welcome.
Once a game feels like a job, I bounce. This kills a lot of modern gaming for me. Cookie Clicker can take months to get to the end. I believe I used some sort of internal cheat to unlock everything after a while, and then I left. It's not in my library anymore.
Last Threshold
A nice little visual novel. Non-Japanese and Lovecraftian. I enjoyed it enough that I left a review on it. It's short and didn't overstay its welcome.
It's been long enough that I could probably play it again and enjoy myself, like one might pick up a fiction book they haven't read in a few years. I remember the overall thrust of the story now that I think of it.
The Letter
This is the horror visual novel released by Yangyang Mobile in 2017 on Steam, not the other games called the same name. 48 hours to play it as far as I did, so a much longer time investment. I recall it having a particularly complex flowchart that made it very difficult to see every permutation of every branch. I finished the major story, but I didn't go down every subtle rabbit hole of difference.
Would I play it again? I'm not sure. That's largely because of the time investment. But I see looking through the achievements that I didn't 100% any of the chapters, so there are still things to explore here. I'd use a walkthrough this time because I've done it once.
To The Core
This game bored me quickly, which is funny because it is a game about boring into the core of planets. It's another incremental game, but it is extremely grindy even for me. I only played it for 50 minutes, and I see play times of around 10-12 hours in the reviews, so that says something.
This one was hanging around in my library, and I've pitched it now.