Sorce's Backlog: Third Time's the Charm

[Sorce]

Speaking of...

Being A DIK
I'd post the trailer but it's NSFW; no outright nudity, but close enough. Anyway, you play a dude who's going to college, and decides to pledge the Delta Iota Kappa frat. Mostly because you need a place to live, but also because they're cool party dudes. Once there, you get involved in the lives of the many students and teachers (mostly women, of course) and carve your own path on the way to adulthood.

The big drawback is that the game is only half-way done. Eight chapters are available out of a supposed/eventual sixteen. Gameplay is largely visual novel-esque, clicking to the next line of dialog. There are (optional) mini-games however, and those range from "click the right spot before the timer runs out" to "follow the narrow path with your mouse arrow" to "type the right pattern with the arrow keys to fight someone" to other shit I don't care about. Again though, they're optional, though they grant you more money in-game and also more rewards (lewd pictures) if you decide to play them.

The game runs on a kind of morality system similar to Mass Effect except instead of Paragon/Renegade, it's CHICK/DIK. Some girls respond better to DIK tactics, others like CHICK stuff more. There really isn't a wrong way to play in this respect, other than not getting laid as often and vigorously as possible. Unless you're doing a celibate run (which is entirely doable, actually) I guess.

The minigames are tolerable, the Main Character is mostly a moron, the girls are cute, the story is generic movie college experience, and somehow the whole thing rises to be better than the sum of it's parts and is pretty fun.

[Sorce]

Jumped back into Outriders, and the (free) expansion is more of the same. This is not a bad thing, because as I've said before the game is fantastic when it works, but it's basically just 4 Expeditions and a handful of achievements and journal entries to unlock.

Oh, also it seemingly works just fine now, so there's that.

[Sorce]

Life is Strange: Before the Storm
They tried really hard, you guys. Tried so hard to get you to like this game. It stars notorious shit-kicker Chloe (but voiced by someone who isn't Ashly Burch, whoops)! It may also involve super-powers (kind of maybe, but not really)! It's a prequel so things are the same, but different (with no framing device so you can actually play it before the first game and not get spoiled)! There's a prequel inside the prequel so that you can have one last adventure with Max and Chloe (only in the special edition)!

But yeah. It's not a bad game, BtS is pretty solid, but it never quite reaches the heights of the original. This is also proved with the Max and Chloe goodbye chapter, which kinda blows the actual game out of the water. The third act is... well a lot happens, but at the same time, a lot that maybe should have happened, didn't. Stem to stern I beat it in under 11 hours, and spent less than $5 on it, and I'm not even mad. I enjoyed the time I spent on it, but it was not the follow-up homerun that it clearly wanted (or at least thought itself) to be.

I would be interested in watching someone play through this and the original Life is Strange in chronological order though, just to see how they'd react.