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Casual Game Day


On 02/17/2020 at 04:42 PM by KnightDriver

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I had an unexpected afternoon to play on Sunday since my work schedule suddenly switched to Saturday. I was in a casual mood and so, to the tunes of bucolic flute music, managed a crew of Gnomes around a pre-industrial town of mines, mills and mage towers. 

Gnome's Garden 2: This is a casual game where you gather materials to do various things like build buildings, fix roads, and other tasks to complete a given mission. You send your Gnomes around to do all this as fast as you can for the highest reward, a 3 star rating. I finished it and replayed levels for 3 stars. I got stuck on one and rage quit/delete. I was testy.

Bioshock remaster: I tried to go more serious and return to my save in the first third of Bioshock. I got the plasmid that turns a Big Daddy into your pet. I made one attack another Big Daddy. My Big Daddy lost but damaged the other one so much, I was able to finish him off quickly. Then I rescued the child. I’m rescuing them all this play through. It seems like the right choice because you get rewarded with a lot of Adam to spend on plasmids from their creator. But then things got too serious. 
      Playing on Hard difficulty is slow going and somewhat unfair. Enemies seem to have a laser sight on you at all times. They also react supernaturally fast. I had a big daddy recover so quickly from fighting my hacked turret and fire plasmid, that the half second or so I needed to hit the button to heal while he was occupied wasn’t fast enough. That, my friends, is BS.
      I’m thinking that next time I’ll lower the difficulty, load up on shotgun shells, and go through the game like it was Doom. To heck with all this trap setting and sneaking around - achievements be damned.

Gnome’s Garden 3: I returned to my casual play and started this third game in the Gnome’s Garden series. GG 3 is the same as 2, except for the story and new levels. There are only a few slight additions I've noticed so far like fire fences that need the fireman to put out.
     I'm playing for that 3 star achievement. I’ve gotten all but that last achievement on the previous 2 games. This time, I'm staying on a level until I 3 star it. I’d like to have 100% on all the Gnomes Garden games eventually. It's not an impossible task; not like carrying a toy all the way through Half-Life 2, Episode 2 so you can put it on the missile at the end - to heck with that darn achievement.

Oh, I should mention that while I was playing all this stuff, I was gaining Game Pass Quest reward points by opening the Game Pass app on my phone and downloading games. I’ve got over 5000 points now. I’ll probably turn them in at 6000 and get something close to $6 for online purchases. Whoopie. It's more for fun than actual great rewards. 


 

Comments

daftman

02/17/2020 at 05:24 PM

Sometimes it's nice to kick back with a casual game. I played more than my fair share of match three (back in the halcyon days before Candy Crush) and hidden object games during stressful college days.

KnightDriver

02/19/2020 at 02:56 PM

Yeah, when I go there, it's definitely a sign of stress. 

Matt Snee Staff Writer

02/17/2020 at 11:28 PM

That's a lot of gnomes. 

KnightDriver

02/19/2020 at 03:06 PM

Actually, I usually only used a two Gnome team to complete the levels. I think I used three only once or twice. But yeah, lots of Gnome games. I think there are 4 in the series right now. 

goaztecs

02/18/2020 at 11:56 AM

Casual games, those are the ones I spend a lot of time with. Just don't get sucked into In App Purchases and you're golden. The Gnomes games sound like it is similar to Sim City and other city building games. 

KnightDriver

02/19/2020 at 03:21 PM

That's why I quit Gems of War. I could tell when the difficulty spiked that they wanted me to buy something. It totally broke the game for me and I couldn't continue with that kind of thing going on. 

Gnomes is similar and much simpler. 

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/21/2020 at 01:29 AM

One of these days I'll allow myself to play games I suck at on Easy ...

KnightDriver

02/23/2020 at 08:39 PM

I used to refuse to play anything not on default settings, but now I just don't care. If I like the game after the first play, I'll replay on tougher difficulty. I got no pride anymore. 

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