Relegated to the Kitchen

Hello

Just over a week left of October and the dark nights have come in quickly. Having the clocks go back an hour at the end of the month will only make the darkness start earlier, but at least the mornings will be a little brighter for a while.

This week I was relegated to the kitchen with my laptop as my wife was entertaining in the living room. I thought I'd take the opportunity to try using the inbuilt game streaming that Steam provides, but unfortunately it wasn't good experience. My first session crashed out on me, and my second session was very laggy. I think the game kept running on the PC from the first session which is why the second session wasn't great. I'll have another go with it at some stage as I think it is a really good feature.

As the streaming wasn't working I installed a couple of games on the laptop from my Steam library that weren't too graphically intensive and didn't have big install sizes. The first of these was Three Fourths Home - Extended Edition. I'd read some non-spoiler reviews of this game and thought it was an interesting concept. You play a girl that has had to move back home to Nebraska to live with her parents after flunking out of college. The game has you driving home through a rainstorm from your dad's childhood home. You talk on the phone to your Mum, Dad and brother during the drive making choices as the conversation progresses. Through two playthroughs the conversation choices didn't impact the ending I got, but each branch provided some more information as to the family dynamics at play. The extended edition on Steam includes an epilogue as well as some of your brother's stories, a photogallery and a radio player of the soundtrack. The epilogue is strange as it is a prologue that takes place before the main story, but it does have alternate endings depending on the conversation choices.

The other two games I played were Spelunky and The Expendabros (the free version of BroForce based on The Expendables films). Spelunky is randomly generated platformer/dungeon crawler that gets good reviews, but during my playtime I just couldn't quite get the hang of it. It looks good and plays well so I'll definitely go back to it and have another crack at it. The Expendabros is similar to Spelunky in it's look and feel, but was easier to get grips with. For it being a free game based on a movie licence it is a very playable little game that sees you running and gunning with members of the Expendabros to make it to the end of the level taking out baddies on your way. Each character has their own method of attack and special move and lives are generated through the levels by saving caged colleagues. Good fun action game just like the movies it is based on.

With it being nearly November it's time to start thinking about Christmas lists. With the amount of games I have, and the number of them that are unplayed, I think I'll just put Xenoblade Chronicles X on my list and see what else I end up with (fingers crossed).

I hope life is good to you

Stuart