Busy Gamer Nation

I seem to recall meeting the developers of the original Zombie Rollerz at PAX many years ago, but apparently we didn't post about it. I did finally play the sequel, Zombie Rollerz: Pinball Heroes, and it is pretty amazing. The game jumps right in with an amusing and very brief recap of the original while teaching you how to play this one.

The levels start out easy (it's almost impossible to lose your ball at first) but there is some strategy, including choosing where to go before the zombie infection fills the overworld map, and you need to rethink how you aim vs. a typical pinball game. There are puzzle levels and treasure chest areas, and an entertaining story.

The Twitch stream dropped right after the first boss battle, which was actually the perfect place:

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I've always been curious about I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, so I finally nabbed a copy during a sale and gave it a try in the ramp up to Halloween 2026 (some 31 years after its initial release and nearly 50 years since the Harlan Ellison story that inspired it).

It's... confusing (and maybe a little prescient). You battle a malevolent AI called AM using an old school adventure console to interact with objects in the world and your inventory. You can see the first two characters in action, but I'm some distance from achieving any sort of resolution much less victory:

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The Cabin Factory sounded like an amusing "cabin in the woods" comedy horror game, but turns out it is terrifying. And funny, but so far only during the opening credits about 15 minutes in - after I completed my first work shift by correctly identifying eight cabins in a row. Just when you think you've got it down, it throws some surprises at you.

I suspect the cabins are random and different every time, but take a look and see if your heart can take it. I'm not sure mine is up to much more of this, honestly, but I'm compelled to continue as if this is my job now.

Maybe I've always been the cabin inspector:

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I've come to enjoy interactive movie games (aka FMV), and Dead Reset is one of the better ones. It's basically Edge of Tomorrow but with a scalpel. You spend several time loops trying to figure out the way through the first major sequence or chapter, and it's daunting at first. Learn from my mistakes and you might get through it a little faster.

Warning: The violence and gore is pretty intense, so only watch this if you enjoy some blood and guts with your horror:

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I picked up Vampire Hunters because it looked awesome, and it is. The game is auto-shooter survival with weapon leveling much like Brotato. Basically, you just keep strapping on weapons until you're a one-person army! There are also upgrades, powerups, skill trees, and moves to unlock. It's not the prettiest game, but it's pretty deep and tons of fun.

Take a look at the options so you're ready to jump in and play:

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I was a fan of Alan Wake (the original, less so the remake and sequel), but my wife really loved Control. It was good and I did stream some of it, but I never actually finished it. I picked up its sequel, Control Resonant, for her and decided to give it a spin too.

I started with the recap, which I guess spoils the ending but, hey, I had more than five years, right? I made it through the first two major weapon tutorials and started to explore the outside world and its platformer elements.

Yeah, I may just stick with this one:

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I love a good jigsaw puzzle game, though I mostly play free daily puzzles on my iPad. Puzzle Galaxy caught my eye on Xbox and I finally gave it a spin.

It's not like other console jigsaw puzzle games. Even on a 150-piece puzzle, they only give you a handful of pieces at a time. This alters the strategy a bit since those pieces tend to go together, so rather than build the frame first you'll figure out how the pieces you have on hand fit. You can shuffle to get a different handful, and there's no rotating pieces so it only took me about 20 minutes.

The game also has a local multiplayer if you hook up another controller, and you can have it give you slider and rotate in place puzzles if you prefer.

The game only has about 30 puzzles including free DLC demos (I browse through all of them in the video), and you can buy the complete version or individual packs if that's not enough:

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I really enjoy word battle games like PopCap's Bookworm Adventures. Gametry's Word Quest: Medieval is not that (also it's mispelled as Medival on the Xbox Store in text but not the box art). It's a very basic word search game where the battles are just visual indicators of your success, and barely even that.

There are no power ups nor strategy, and I completed 40 levels in 15 minutes. There are 210 total so you can probably beat it in 90 mins. But take a look before you buy:

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I love a good puzzle game, but Escape Simulator takes it to professional escape room levels. I did play a similar title, Escape Academy, which was fun and significantly less difficult. Now I did skip past the early levels and jumped into the cutest sounding one I could find (without paying for DLC): Cats in Time.

It's hard. It took some time to crack even a few clues, but from this playthrough you can see how the game works. You can pick up hints and objects such as books, and pin them to review overlaid next to the puzzle you want to tackle with it. Sometimes it pays off, other times you can't zoom in on important details like a calendar with circled clues, and THERE MAY BE MATH. Maybe I should've started at the top.

Yeah, this may take awhile:

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When I first saw Date Everything! added to Xbox Game Pass, I read the reviews and then decided I had to try it. It's very strange. First you start a job that is immediately replaced by AI, which maybe hits a little too close to home to be entertaining but they pull it off.

But this just frees you up to date your home furnishings. Yeah, really. It's a dating sim where you can woo your bed, door, magnifying glass, phone, glasses (played by Felicia Day!), and I'm guessing the piano and dishwasher. The writing is funny and the voice acting is top drawer (which I suspect you can also date).

I'm not proud; I need to see where this is going:

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GrrlGotGame is a big fan of the Katamari series, so I'm always looking for new and improved games to add to our library. Once Upon a Katamari seems like one of the best ones yet, with a bizarre time travel story and new powerups like the magnet.

I chose the more complicated controls (this isn't my first katamari rodeo (I've played most of them including Katamari Damacy Reroll and We Love Katamari Reroll) and succeeded in finding all three crowns on the first level. I then tried out the player customization options:

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I'm not big on beat 'em ups but I've been on a Scott Pilgrim kick lately, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game has been in my library forever. So I thought I'd give it a try.

The levels are long... it took me pretty much the full 30 minutes to get through the first one. There are little bits of Pilgrimiana peppered through the snowy landscape but I didn't get a real sense of the story nor did the controls seem particularly tight. Still, I did OK and had some fun. The next section seems to be a bonus level, but I wasn't in the mood to run around collecting coins so I gave it a pass.

You can see the full game instructions and controls at the start of the video, which should give you a leg up if you decide to try it:

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I've been a Halo: Combat Evolved fan since the beginning, though primarily the single player. And of course that whole I Love Bees thing is a bit of an obsession. I've been calling this "Campaign Evolved" remake The Final Ripoff in homage to the Monty Python compilation album of the same name. And in some ways it really is, as the third iteration of this game after the original and The Master Chief Collection remaster.

But it's not without improvements. You can sprint. You can aim down sights even if there's no scope. There are some new missions. And apparently if you find the right skull, you can play the full game in third person (I didn't get that far, yet).

The stream dropped after a few minutes, so I had to restart the first bonus mission. After a bit, I skipped to the main course: the re-remastered Halo with what are some new, very cheesy lines. Yeah, I'll be back:

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I wasn't sure what to expect from Beastro, but it's a cooking game that powers a card battle dynamic. It seems far too complicated for casual play. Take a look, and you'll see what I mean (or if it's maybe made for you).

I did enjoy some foraging, restaurant mini-games, and fishing before getting dunked into the card battles:

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I like a good anthropomorphic animal game, and I was thinking that Back to the Dawn would be like Blacksad: Under the Skin only in prison (less Zootopia, more Oz). Alas, this is more like Escapists: a top-down RPG where you need to charm your fellow prisoners, earn money, and talk to your lawyer to overcome a frame up.

The Twitch stream dropped out after 10 minutes, but you get the idea:

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Buckshot Roulette reminded me of CloverPit so, despite the dark subject matter, I decided to give it a try. After 10 minutes, I finally realized I could choose to aim at the dealer and not just myself, and I was finally able to win a round. Not only that, I beat the game. It's more strategy than anything else, with some powerups that appear after the first cycle to heal you and let you maximize your opponent's damage.

It's not easy, but it's not as hard as it looks. That said, I probably won't play it again because it's also disturbing as hell:

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We were big fans of Crackdown on Xbox, and later Infamous on PlayStation. Prototype seemed like a great hybrid of these two dynamics. The only problem is that your powers seem to be maxed at the start, so that takes a bit of the fun out of it. I don't think I ever finished this one (unlike those other two), and that might be why.

You can see from this stream that even taking out tanks is super easy, barely an inconvenience, right off the bat. The story isn't bad but not amazing either:

I don't recall Prototype 2, so I probably skipped it after abandoning the original. Big mistake. Huge. This game already feels a lot better and seems much more interesting than its predecessor. I get less of a Crackdown + Infamous vibe and the sense that it's becoming more of its own thing.

I did play the recap from the first game up front, so if you don't want to be spoiled you should skip the first few minutes. There are a lot of cutscenes but some decent gameplay too. And the story is intriguing me. I think I want to finish this one:

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We have been Borderlands fans since the beginning, but Borderlands 3 left us a little empty (though it had its moments) and Borderlands 4 looked terrible. That combined with the ripoff pricing kept us away. For my birthday this year, I decided to treat myself to the base game, which I managed to get down to $25. Playing the first 30 minutes, I think we'll get our money's worth - barely.

Of course, the first third is game patch download (really!), cut scenes, setting preferences, and choosing who to play (I went with my standby, Siren, though all of the classes looked fun). So far the action is smooth but generic. (Eight hours later, I still feel this way - solid gameplay, not much in the way of story.)

It all seemed to be going well until the glitch at the end. I wasn't sure how to progress the game after my ally started running into a wall, so realizing I was at time I just quit:

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Back in the day, we were big fans of The 7th Guest on Mac. Its campy story, bad acting, dark subject matter, and frequent taunts ("We'll all be dead by the time you solve this!") kept us coming back for more. So imagine my surprise to learn there is a full The 7th Guest Remake with improved acting and new puzzles. I dove right in.

There's nothing too spoiler-y here - I inverted look, figured out the lantern thing, and solved a couple very easy puzzles and one that required a few resets to crack:

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As I've no doubt mentioned before, the Re-Volt demo back in the Xbox Live online beta days was a bit of magic (and more fun than the Dreamcast game). So I'm always looking for a mini-car title that recaptures those thrills. So far, the closest one has been Mad Tracks back in 2007. So many games miss the mark, and that is clearly the case with Mini Madness. I'm not sure I even finished a race. I tried the tutorial but it wasn't clear what to do. I quit hoping for some in-race teaching or prompts but kept losing the path and didn't see how to reset.

Once I found out how to reset on the track, I thought I was golden - but far from it. Avoid this game:

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