One Way Video Games Mimic Personal Preferences, But Not in the Way You Think

 

Yeah, it's a bit of a clickbaity title, and I'll own that.  Let's start off with some context first.

After buying Divine Divinity back on February 4th, I'd been playing it pretty regularly, a few hours every couple of days.  I'd almost cleared out the starting area map, which itself is pretty massive, encompassing a village of healers, an expanse of trees and rocks, farm lands, a castle, a monastery, a Dwarven village, another human settlement, an army encampment complete with multiple orc fronts, and a ruined village.  I'd also discovered a new map to the south, with an even larger open and heavily forested area that was beyond my level.  Then, to the north, I came to the city of Verdistis, and my play time almost immediately dropped off.  Then, a few days later, I found the entrance to a massive sewer system, and after my overly encumbered character came topside to sell my lootz, I stopped playing again.

That's when it really hit me.  I often don't like large cities in CRPGs the same way I don't gravitate towards large cities in real life.

Several years ago, in the Before Times, Conklederp and I went up to Vancouver, BC, to see her youngest brother when he was attending UBC.  We stayed at a hotel in downtown Vancouver, and I remember sitting with Conklederp during breakfast, talking about what we wanted to do that day.  We were kind of lost in that our usual activities centered around getting away from the city, usually to do some kind of hiking.  Since we only had the morning before meeting up with her family, we decided to walk around a section of downtown before walking back over to the University.  Before The Squire was born, if both of us had a free weekend, oftentimes we would head out to the Columbia Gorge to do a hike.  When friends would come in from out of town, we would suggest some places in town that felt like they were "must-see locations," but more often than not, we would also suggest the Gorge as a place to go.  We've also talked about when we'll take The Squire out to see Conklederp's family in Quebec, and we've both agreed that our ideal plan would be to fly into Montréal, then rent a car and drive two hours to a house her family has out by a lake and spend our whole vacation out there.  Skip the city altogether, just spend a week at the house next to a lake by ourselves and with her family; and I know it's not very eco-friendly of me to say, but I really hope the city/county has decided to start spraying again because those mosquitoes they got out there are something nasty.

I've talked with my younger sister, The Kid, frequently about Baldur's Gate, and the talk frequently leads to how much of the game we've played, but how few times we've actually beaten the game.  I've beaten it twice, I think, and The Kid has beaten it once.  We've agreed (yes?) that once the game leads you up to the city of Baldur's Gate, we begin to lose interest.  Part of that is due to in-city quests centered more around talking to one character than talking to another character, then doing a fetch-quest of sorts, and then turning in the quest, assuming you're not caught by the city guard.  Whereas dungeon quests are typically: Go to the dungeon, kill baddies, collect loot, kill the main dungeon bad guy, leave, turn in quest.  They're a lot more straightforward, and you're less likely to dead-end or fail a quest due to an incorrect dialogue choice.

Don't get me wrong, though, I enjoy conversations in video games, although at times I am worried that a wrong dialogue choice is going to close off chunks of the game, like in the Fallout series.  It's conversing in real life that gives me anxiety.  During character creation, apparently Conversations/Small Talk was my dump stat, and I've just never bothered to level it up.

I guess what I'm trying to say, the tl;dr if you will, now that we've already passed the 675 word mark, is that large cities in CRPGs stress me out and apparently make me lose motivation, the same way that large cities in real life (downtown Seattle, downtown Portland, downtown New York, the whole of London, the middle of San Francisco) stress me out; especially if I'm in a car and expected to park.  I'll leave big cities to people who can successfully perform small talk at parties and whose batteries recharge with schmoozing.  Cash me outside and all that.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: Forgotten Possessions (MQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Forgotten Possessions through Keymailer, a third-party company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played, and content be created.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Forgotten Possessions

Systems: Meta Quest 2/3

Release Date: February 26, 2026

Publisher: Glock Software

Developer: Glock Software

Time Spent: 36 Minutes

Playthrough Videos on YouTube

I hadn't thought I was going to be writing a Game EXP article after playing for only 36 minutes, although it turns out that's all the time you need to beat Forgotten Possessions.

The description of the game prides itself on there being no handholding, that you figure out what you're supposed to do as you play, so I was initially a bit confused at the beginning of my first attempt when a hulking creature came out from the front door and began chasing me before I could do anything.  How was I supposed to play the game if it came at me shortly after starting the game?  Was this going to be like a more intense and frustrating Remothered: Tormented Fathers?  How was the player supposed to take in the setting if the game started with a terrifying chase right off the bat?  Where's the player to go from there?  Thankfully, the creature that stalks you throughout the house and the grounds of the graveyard is a lot more forgiving, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

By my third run, I finally gathered the overall objective and primary mechanics in Forgotten Possessions.  You play as a person (whose identity is at the moment unclear), and you enter the grounds of a graveyard keeper.  Nailed to the front door are three items you need to collect that are randomly generated in the house.  When you pick up an item, you can either carry it in your hand or attach it to your Batman-style utility belt.  The game tells you that the more you're carrying, the louder you are when you move/run.  Stalking the grounds and house is a hulking creature that will one-shot kill you if it catches you.  In more than one instance, I was able to run past/around the creature while being in very close quarters, so the creature has to actually strike you and not just come in contact with you.  After you collect an item, or after you collect all three, you place them in a coffin.  After all three items are in the coffin, you have to escape out the front door of the house, after which you are then transported back to the starting cabin.

That's pretty much the gameplay loop.  Avoid the creature, find the objects, place the objects in the coffin, and escape.

There are several in-game mechanics that sound great on paper, but their execution fell a little flat.  The inside of the house is made up of several rooms and a long hallway.  Some of the rooms are interconnected, while others are single rooms.  There is an outdoor area that's accessible through two exits to the house.  When you're inside the house, sometimes a ceiling beam will fall, creating both a jump scare for the player and also alerting the creature to where your general location is in the house.  In a traditional survival horror game, randomized falling objects would be terrifying, but I've found the beams fall when I'm sprinting, and that's when I'm running away from the creature, so my mind is elsewhere.  It probably also doesn't help that the beams don't physically affect the environment, as you can still pass through them, so it's not like it can block one of your avenues for escape.

The falling beams do create sound, though, which does attract the creature to your location, although I don't know if the creature has a limited listening range.  The sound design also doesn't feel as effective as it feels it should be.  In each of my runs, I'd listen pretty intently for the footfalls of the creatures, looking through windows and around corners to know where they were before moving into the next room.    I can hear the footsteps and the general direction they're coming from, but not the distance, eg, louder = closer.  I also can't tell how much noisier I am when I'm sprinting, carrying three objects in the utility belt versus one.  

The last thing I want to bring up is the doors.  I'm not a big fan of how the doors here operate, as I could never get them to open correctly.  I would grab the knob and pull (or push), but regardless of how much I pulled my hand in (or pushed out), the door would always seem to open only halfway.  During my first few runs, I had tried to open the door just to walk through, but that ended up being too cumbersome, especially when being chased by the creature.  Thankfully, I discovered that the doors can move both ways, and that as long as I grabbed the doorknob in the right place and just kept sprinting through, the door would open.  I noticed that sometimes the doors would remain open, and I don't know if that was a result of sprinting through them, but it didn't feel like it was supposed to happen, and at the same time, I couldn't plan for it or really exploit it.

After the last run, the game mentioned starting over with the promise of new item locations and events, but it turned out that it was the same gravekeeper's house and the same selection of items to collect the first time around.  That's when I decided to stop playing.

In the end, Forgotten Possessions was more than just 'alright.'  I liked scouring rooms with the flashlight while being a bit on edge, waiting for the music to become intense, telling me that I needed to run.  I liked the simplicity of the UI as it all felt very intuitive.  I liked the general layout of the house, but by the end of the second run, it began to feel rather small and cramped.  That there were only so many places items could be stashed and where the creature would be at any given moment, meant that there were fewer surprises, fewer places to explore.  For a solo indie developer, I hope that they're able to see some success with Forgotten Possessions to see what they can do with a larger area to explore and possibly more creatures to avoid.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Strange Eyes are Gazing

MIDI Week Singles: "ZX Spectrum: Western Trot" - Super Life of Pixel (NS)

 

"ZX Spectrum: Western Trot"* from Super Life of Pixel on Windows, PlayStation 4, PS Vita, & Nintendo Switch (2018)
Composer: Ashton Morris
Album: Life of Pixel Original Soundtrack
Label: Steam
Publisher: White Moon Dreams, Inc.
Developer: Super Icon Ltd.

I had first planned on writing about the music from Super Life of Pixel six and a half years ago when I reviewed the game for #IndieSelect, but I couldn't find a source for the soundtrack that didn't require me to buy the game off Steam.  Sadly, the most readily available way to buy the soundtrack is still off Steam.  Now that The Squire has gotten into playing the game, I thought it was the right time to revisit this soundtrack, specifically, both mine and The Squire's favorite song (he told me this independently of my influence), "Western Trot" by Ashton Morris.

"Western Trot" is specifically just that.  It's a quick 4/4 with two eighth notes on beat two and quarter notes on the rest, that somewhat mimics the trotting of a horse.  The instrumentation here, while reminiscent of the ZX Spectrum sound chip, which offers gargling-sounding tones, fits in really well with the Western aesthetic, picturing a brightly colored, bustling town with a stranger riding in on a trotting horse.  I don't know, it just works and I love how catchy the whole song is, especially when the main theme comes back with more backing tracks than I think were available on the original ZX Spectrum at the time.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Said into that Great Void, My Soul be Hurled

*P.S.  The other thing I wanted to mention is that on the official soundtrack, this song is listed simply as "ZX Spectrum," because those are the levels where this song plays.  However, in-game, when you select the ZX Spectrum, at the top of the screen, there's text that reads: "Chip Tune Radio. . . "Western Trot" by Ashton Morris.  So "Western Trot" is clearly the name of the song, written and titled by Ashton Morris, but on the soundtrack, only the system is used for the title for whatever reason.  So, as a compromise, I've decided to use both.

First Impressions: Ancient Shadows Awakening (Playtest) (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Ancient Shadows Awakening Playtest through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Ancient Shadows Awakening (Playtest)
Release Date: 2026
Systems: Windows
Publisher: Petr Najman
Developer: Petr Najman
Time Spent: 2 Hours 20 Minutes
Gameplay  Videos on YouTube

Ancient Shadows Awakening is a solo first-person dungeon crawl in the vein of 30-year-old dungeon crawls like 1989's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Hillsfar and 1991's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder.  You play as Erlan as you set off on a quest to find a way to heal your friend, the ailing blacksmith Armin.  While out searching for a cure, Erlan stumbles upon a sealed door to an underground cavern and, weaponless, decides to head down the stairs to the dungeon.  The story itself is rather flimsy and not really captivating, but motivations aside, Ancient Shadows Awakening attempts to recreate the feeling of the Westwood CRPG dungeon crawlers from the late 80s and early 90s for a modern audience.

While thematically similar to games like Eye of the Beholder, Ancient Shadows Awakening is primarily different as you play as a single character and not an adventuring party.  Erlan, as far as I can tell, doesn't have a class either, in the traditional TTRPG sense, and as you rise in levels by killing enemies throughout the dungeon.  As mentioned previously, you're ill-equippd for your quest as you don't have any weapons and all of the ragity bits of armor you find, provide more armor than the simiple clothes you start the game with.  You're able to raise and customize Erlan's stats to be the type of character and playstyle you tend to favor, although there is not a lot in the way of options outside of maximum health, mana, and a handful of stats that seem to have been imported from the survival genre.

That's right, Ancient Shadows Awakening has integrated several mechanics reminiscent of survival games.  You have a hydration meter that slowly depletes over time, replenishable by drinking water out of fonts, eating food, or from bottles of water.  Taking damage because your health or hydration is at zero as you scour the dungeon for anything else to eat isn't fun.  There is a lantern oil mechanic that slowly drains every time you have your lantern out.  You have a calorie meter that slowly drains over time and can be replenished by eating food.  You have a stamina meter that drains every time you sprint, although it thankfully refills whenever you're not sprinting, so you don't have to constantly sprint and stand still waiting to sprint again.  You also have limited space in your inventory and a limited number of saves per location mechanic (you can only save in a location up to three times before your health is drained each time you save).

Because it's the mid-2020s, there's also a crafting mechanic that allows you to create items from a predetermined list, such as whetstones to repair the durability of your weapons, because of course there's a durability mechanic here too.  There's also soup to replenish health and hydration, but only some types of food, as I've found that eating a cooked steak will actually drain your hydration a few points.  There's alchemical crafting for potions too, but only for recipes that you know, as you're not allowed to mix random ingredients willy-nilly.  There's also some kind of campfire mechanic, but I have yet to figure out how to use it effectively beyond boiling a murky potion into clean water.  I'm sure it has something to do with the bowl or raw soup I crafted.  Maybe I just need an additional bowl to put the bowl of raw soup into before I put it over the fire?

Ancient Shadows Awakening seems purposefully vague on a lot of fronts, in the way a game won't hold your hand, explaining all of the mechanics up front.  I kind of appreciate this figure-out-as-you-go-along, but the calorie and hydration mechanic, along with the limited lantern oil, feels like a lot to manage during your first playthrough.  Even with the multiple save slots, it feels like I could very easily save my way into a corner where Erlan is low on health, low on calories, low on hydration, low on oil, and the last time I saved was 45 minutes ago after traversing another large room of spike and flame traps; and I'm still confused how/why I'm ocassionally getting damage going through that room even when I don't step on spike plates.

I think if this were the final version of the game, I would be worried about the longevity of Ancient Shadows Awakening, or the general frustration of the mechanics being too punishing, even on normal difficulty. Thankfully, this is just a playtest, so there's room to make adjustments and improvements.  Ancient Shadows Awakening does have a lot of good ideas, but it seems like there are just too many irons in the proverbial fire, without a really clear view of what the game is trying to be.  Crafting.  Survival.  Dungeon Crawl. Inventory Management.  Because right now, with so many facets, it's hard for any one mechanic to feel like it stands out and is supposed to be the focal point of the game.  I can't quite tell what the game is trying to excel at, and sadly, that's to the detriment of the game as a whole.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Shattered Hope Became My Guide

MIDI Week Singles: "Cave Story/Plantation" - Cave Story+ (VSD)

 

"Cave Story/Plantation" from Cave Story+ on the Wii, DSi, macOS, Linux, Windows, Steam OS, Nintendo Switch (2004-2018)
Composer: Daisuke Amaya
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nicalis
Developer: Daisuke Amaya

If you've been perusing our YouTube channel this week, you might've noticed that we've posted two songs from Cave Story, which might've hinted that I've been playing Cave Story.  I've been playing Cave Story, specifically, Cave Story+.  I'll try to be as specific as possible here, since there are several iterations of the same game, and the Cave Story+ that's currently on Steam has two graphical options: the original 2004 freeware game, and the 2011 remastered game.  AND the game also has three soundtrack options: the original 2004 soundtrack, the 2011 remastered soundtrack arranged by Danny Baranowsky, and the "new" soundtrack by Yann van der Cruyssen that was included on all Cave Story+ releases.

All of that to say, that I found I liked the original version of the title screen music, often titled "Title Menu" or "Cave Story (Plantation)", so I decided to go with "Cave Story/Plantation" instead. Considering the somewhat heaviness of the story involving the violent subjugation of a species of anthropomorphized rabbits to fight an army of robots is a bit dark, and this song is the exact opposite of that.  It's the opening title music, so it's supposed to get you in the mood to play.  What I love about this song is how well it works as both a main and a title theme, and in the stage where you see the BBEG's plans coming to fruition.  Daisuke Amaya could have written an incredibly melancholy piece as Quote walks into the cavernous plantation, seeing all of the captured Mimiga forced to work the fields, growing the red flowers that turn them into mindless, raging creatures.  But no.  We are presented with the scene accompanied by this jovial tune that greeted us when we first started the game.

I'm sure there's something deeper to be said here, I just don't know what it is.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Крики жертв темноты

MIDI Week Singles Archive

 

I mentioned this back during our Monthly Update article last week, but I wanted to expand ever so slightly while at the same time recapping.

Back when Dr. Potts and I were starting out the MIDI Week Singles articles at TwoBoysAndTheirBlog, we would simply upload the videos directly to the Blogger portal for songs we already had access to, or link to YouTube videos for songs we didn't have.  After rebranding as Stage Select Start in 2015, I started uploading the videos to my YouTube account, then linking them to our MIDI Week Singles articles.  I had originally kept the videos on YouTube as "Unlisted" so they could only be played through our articles, but over the years, I decided to make those MIDI Week Singles videos on YouTube public.  I figured it would be good for the brand to have article links back to our Stage Select Start site too.

The difference between the MIDI Week Singles Archive and our regular MIDI Week Singles is simply just the songs that we first used over on TwoBoysAndTheirBlog.  I still haven't decided yet if I want to replace the videos in the articles over on our first site to keep everything on our YouTube channel, or to keep the site the way it is now, for posterity's sake.  It's a toss-up because if I update the video, then the linked video will say "MIDI Week Singles Archive" with a video uploaded to an article that was posted 12 years ago.  That being said, I am tempted to replace all of the dead URLs from YouTube accounts that don't exist for one reason or another on TBatB with new videos so that there's something there besides a dead link.  Yet I'm still conflicted.

I've also debated whether I want to include the handful of songs we posted there for Game Scores, but keep them under the MIDI Week Singles Archive banner.  As we were still finding our footing at the time, there were even a couple of Game Scores articles that didn't have any music, and we would just talk about the music itself.  

Until I come to a final decision, you can check out new videos posted to our MIDI Week Singles Archive playlist over on YouTube, updated every Friday for at least the next 45 weeks.  The release order will mimic the original releases over on TBatB.  Thanks for listening.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
We Have Sailed For So Very Long

P.S.  There were even a couple of MIDI Week Singles articles where we didn't use video game music, but arranged video game music, and in one bizarre instance, music from a movie soundtrack.  It was a weird time.

MIDI Week Singles: "Colt Travels" - GUN Showdown (PSP)

 

"Colt Travels" from GUN Showdown on the PlayStation Portable and Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, & Xbox 360 (2005-2006)
Composer: Christopher Lennertz
Album: GUN - Original Score
Label: Activision
Publisher: Activision Publishing, Inc
Developer: Rebellion Developments

I don't know if it's intentional or just the way my brain works, but in the first 35 seconds of this song, I hear bits of John Barry's score from Dances with Wolves.  Not any specific notes or chords, but the feeling and emotion that the music evokes, from songs like "Journey to Fort Sedgewick" and "Ride to Fort Hays."  It's that feeling of wide openness amid an expanse (limited by the game engine at the time, so the horizon is often obscured by fog, hills, and high canyon walls) of stereotypical Western scenery while on a grand adventure of revenge.

This song, too, seems to pull out a lot of short-lived stops as far as instrumentation goes.  There's the beginning with the building full orchestra.  Then there's a solo flute at 0:37 that plays a single sustained note that doesn't do anything but adds so much flavor to this piece.  Then there's the church-bell-like chime with its solitary tone.  Then there's the harmonica and fiddle that come in around 0:57, followed by three or four notes on the banjo before the orchestra returns.  And I love, love, love, how the song fades out on those last three notes on the harmonica!

I picked up GUN Showdown on the PSP around 2011 after watching my now brother-in-law, Beardsnbourbon, play Red Dead Redemption, and felt bitten by that Western bug.  Having music like "Colt Travels" playing while traversing the dusty lands between the town of Dodge City and Empire helped to make the game feel bigger than the map actually was, especially in the late game when you didn't have to worry as much about bandit attacks, and you could enjoy the ride.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
River is Flowing Down in Constant Movement

Sony Backing Out Of Steam

Over the last week, there have been a lot of news stories about Sony "pulling the plug on Steam sales," or at the very least, deciding that porting once-PS5-exclusive games to PC is no longer a viable option for them.  I have obviously zero information from anyone inside the industry, but after having a couple of PS5 games on my Steam wishlist like Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man 2, Stellar Blade, Until Dawn, and the two The Last of Us games, I have my own theories.  

In the last couple of days, when I've seen articles about this, I just sort of brushed them off, but when I really looked at one last Wednesday afternoon from Polygon, the headline read, "PS5 games aren't selling well on PC - so Sony is pulling the plug."  I haven't yet read the article, and I will after I finish this article (I guess to see if my speculation here is a rehash of what is in that article).  I had speculated to myself that it might have to do with poor sales, but this was the first confirmation of the reasoning behind their decision.  As I said, I've had several of the Sony Publishing LLC games on my radar (I have 16 on my Steam Wishlist), but since I am looking at prices on Steam, likely like a lot of people who play games through Steam, I'm waiting for some nice sales come the changing of the seasons, and I don't recall seeing many of the games having significant discounts.

That's the crux of my theory, which I'm going to check in real time as I write this article: that games released on Steam from Sony Publishing LLC have not had significant discounts during the years that Sony has been publishing games on the Steam storefront.  What I mean by "significant discount" is ≥75% of the game's asking price.  As of Wednesday, March 5th, there are 23 games published by Sony Publishing LLC currently available on Steam; Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition was delisted when Forbidden Zero Dawn Remastered was released.  All of the current price data will be pulled from Steam, and all sales data I will be pulling will be from SteamDB.info, a great site for checking the price history of games on Steam, as well as Steam Deck compatibility for games that Steam may list as Unsupported.

I'm listing the games in alphabetical order because that's just the way my brain works, and I justify it by making it easier to find specific games.

Title	Base Price	Lowest Price	% Discount
Days Gone	$39.99	$12.49	69%
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture	$19.99	$4.99	75%
Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut	$59.99	$35.99	40%
God of War	$49.99	$19.99	60%
God of War Ragnarok	$59.99	$40.19	33%
Helldivers 2	$39.99	$29.99	25%
Helldivers Die Harder Edition	$19.99	$3.99	80%
Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition	$59.99	$35.99	40%
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered	$49.99	$29.99	40%
LEGO Horizon Adventures	$39.99	$19.99	50%
Lost Soul Aside	$59.99	$40.19	33%
Marvel's Spider-Man 2	$59.99	$47.99	20%
Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered	$59.99	$23.99	60%
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales	$49.99	$19.99	60%
Midnight Murder Club	$9.99	$7.99	20%
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart	$59.99	$23.99	60%
Returnal	$59.99	$23.99	60%
Sackboy: A Big Adventure	$59.99	$19.79	67%
Stellar Blade	$59.99	$44.99	25%
The Last of Us Part 1	$59.99	$29.99	50%
The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered	$49.99	$39.99	20%
Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection	$49.99	$16.49	67%
Until Dawn	$59.99	$39.99	33%

So it looks like I was partly right in my theory/assumption, although there's likely more to it than just that.  The only two games to have had a discount ≥75% have been Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Helldivers Die Harder Edition.  Also not likely a cooincidence are that these two games were released on Steam in 2016 and 2015, respectively.  As I was looking at this data, I was starting to see a pattern.

On a separate spreadsheet, I added two additional columns listing the release date for each game, and how many days that has been since "today," being March 5, 2026 (when I wrote the majority of this article).  Two out of 23 games receiving a discount of ≥75% is pretty bad in my money-skimping-wallet opinion, especially since 12 of those 23 were released in the last two years (Helldivers 2 was released February 8, 2024).  Of those 12 games, only LEGO Horizon Adventures has gotten a discount of 50%, with all of the other games released in the last two years receiving, at most, a 40% discount, which is still a $35.99 game (down from $59.99).

Name	Base Price	Lowest Price	% Discount	Steam Release Date
Helldivers Die Harder Edition	$19.99	$3.99	80%	12/7/2015
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture	$19.99	$4.99	75%	4/14/2016
Days Gone	$39.99	$12.49	69%	5/17/2021
God of War	$49.99	$19.99	60%	1/14/2022
Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered	$59.99	$23.99	60%	8/12/2022
Sackboy: A Big Adventure	$59.99	$19.79	67%	10/17/2022
Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection	$49.99	$16.49	67%	10/19/2022
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales	$49.99	$19.99	60%	11/18/2022
Returnal	$59.99	$23.99	60%	2/15/2023
The Last of Us Part 1	$59.99	$29.99	50%	3/28/2023
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart	$59.99	$23.99	60%	7/26/2023
Helldivers 2	$39.99	$29.99	25%	2/8/2024
Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition	$59.99	$35.99	40%	3/21/2024
Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut	$59.99	$35.99	40%	5/16/2024
God of War Ragnarok	$59.99	$40.19	33%	9/19/2024
Until Dawn	$59.99	$39.99	33%	10/4/2024
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered	$49.99	$29.99	40%	10/31/2024
LEGO Horizon Adventures	$39.99	$19.99	50%	11/14/2024
Marvel's Spider-Man 2	$59.99	$47.99	20%	1/30/2025
The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered	$49.99	$39.99	20%	4/3/2025
Stellar Blade	$59.99	$44.99	25%	6/11/2025
Midnight Murder Club	$9.99	$7.99	20%	8/14/2025
Lost Soul Aside	$59.99	$40.19	33%	8/28/2025

Now I feel we're getting somewhere!  Or maybe I'm just excited about spreadsheets.  I'm excited about spreadsheets.  

Without doing a deeper analysis, you can clearly see that the further back we go for releases, i.e., older games, the steeper/more significant the discounts are, which is to be expected.  Since January, 2025, the largest discount was 33%, for Lost Soul Aside, which still leaves the price at $40.19.  Going back two years, the largest discount is 50%, but that was for LEGO Horizon Adventures, a decidedly niche game with a smaller target audience than either of the original Horizon games.  There are only six games on this list, with the exception of LEGO Horizon Adventures, all released during or before 2022, that have been discounted below $20; not including games that were below $20 to begin with.  As someone who is more likely to buy a game that's on sale if it's under $20, these data results are bonkers to me, but I still feel there's an inside explanation.

It feels like Sony sees the PlayStation 5 games it released on Steam/PC as a gift to the PC gaming community, and so they're charging a premium for the privilege of playing official ports of PlayStation games on a PC.  It actually reminds me a lot of Nintendo's pricing model for their first-party games: prices stay high for the life of the console, with discounts typically only dipping down to 33%.  I can almost guarantee you that Nintendo would do the exact same thing and voice the same concerns as Sony if there were ever an official port of Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Xenoblade Chronicles 3.  A Sony PC Tax?  

People who have a PlayStation 5 are not Sony's target audience for the games they're releasing on Steam, and the people who really, really want to play these games will likely have already bought them within the first couple of weeks after they're released, paying full MSRP.  The remainder of the sales are likely to come from people who have heard good things about Until Dawn, a two-year-old port of an 11-year-old game, see that it's at a 75% discount (down to $14.99), during Steam's Spooktackular October 2026 sale, and add it to their unplayed backlog of 347 games.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

There's a Sadness

P.S.  I find it interesting that all of the articles reference Jason Schrier's article in Bloomberg, but none of the articles I've read (I've read four) ever go into the why of "why Sony's sale of PC games is so low," only that they are; there was some speculating that releasing Sony games on Steam "hurts the brand" and to keep otherwise PlayStation exclusives off of the next Xbox platform which is rumored to be able to play games that run on Windows, but still doesn't really get to why sales are low.  Which was my whole point of writing this article.  Speculation, assumption, and theorizing.

Game EXP: Egg (PC)

 

Egg

Release Date: February 3, 2024

Systems: Windows, Steam OS, Linux

Publisher: KolbasinoGames

Developer: KolbasinoGames

Time Spent: 39 Minutes 20 Seconds

Game Play Video on YouTube

I was morbidly intrigued by Egg and the 4,011 positive reviews this clicker game had on Steam.  I saw that the one achievement in the game titled "You Did This" had the subtitle of "Collected 1.000.000 Eggs" and figured that this meant you had to click 1,000,000 eggs, presumably collecting one egg with each click.  God forbid that each click makes microcracks along the egg, and only after 1,000 clicks does the egg crack open, and you collect it.  

But no.  Each click has zero effect on the egg that is slowly rotating only a few degrees in each direction; only the number at the top of the screen increases with each click.  There's a separate window in the upper left that looks like an egg above a cloud.  I don't know what that is supposed to mean.

I don't know what any of this clicker game is supposed to mean.  Is it a troll?  Is it an experiment to see what people will do for a single achievement?  Admittedly, I saw that only 3.9% of people who have started Egg have received this achievement and thought, "How hard could it be to click a mouse 1,000,000 times?

Well, I timed myself and found out that I can click a mouse pretty reliably at the rate of 100 clicks every 20.5 seconds, or 4.88 clicks per second, which won't get me anywhere near a Starcraft tournament.  And while still clicking, I figured out that it would take me roughly 55.5 hours to reach 1,000,000 clicks.  The other kicker to this game is that there is no save function.  You have to have the game open the entire time you're clicking.  

55.5 hours of constant clicking.  More if you think you need to sleep, eat, and/or expel bodily waste.

So let's say you're clicking 100 clicks every 20 seconds.  That's 9000 clicks every 30 minutes.  Factor in a one-minute break every 30 minutes.  And because you're a reasonable person, you're getting nearly seven hours of sleep per night.  And factor in an hour for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bathroom breaks.  Every 24-hour period comes out to:

• Gaming for 15.5 Hours = 279,000 Clicks
• 1 Hour 32 minutes = Breaks/Eating/Bathrooming
• 6 Hours 58 minutes = Sleeping

By the time you earn that "You Did This" achievement in Egg, you will have played this game and had it open the whole time; Steam will have logged nearly +/- 81 hours, or three plus days.  Or put in another way.  If you started this game today, Friday, March 6th at 10:00 AM local time, you will reach 1,000,000 clicks around 7PM local time on Monday, March 9th.

No.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

This Is Your Sense Of Failure

MIDI Week Singles: "Underwater Scene: - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)

 

"Underwater Scene" from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1989)
Composers: Jun Funahashi & Hidenori Maezawa
Album: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES - Vinyl Soundtrack
Label: Limited Run Games
Publisher: Nintendo of America & Ultra Software Corporation
Developer: Konami

Let me introduce you to a song that will induce PTSD in an entire generation of gamers.  And if you're worried about the final 20 seconds, don't worry, I didn't tack on the two-timer running-out cues, although I did briefly consider it.  I thought that just one stress-inducing track would be enough, so I leave you with "Underwater Scene."

But is it actually stress-inducing on its own?  Sure, the song conjures up flashbacks to swimming through tightly bound forests of electrified kelp, patiently waiting for electrified barriers to cycle off, and hunting for bombs to disarm, while a counter at the bottom of the screen counts down from 2:20.  The 3/4 (or 6/8?) time signature is classic of underwater music, which plays heavily against how anxious this level is, often waiting for the electrified gates to cycle through so you can swim past them, either waiting stationary at the bottom along the rocks, or flutter-tapping the A button to stay afloat in hopes of maintaing some semblance of momentum.  Only to have the barrier turn on right at the last millisecond, zapping away a full block of health.

Happy first week of the end of the first quarter of 2026.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And Laughing Planned the End

P.S.  In yet another instance of looking up when I last wrote about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because I remember turning the MIDI Week Single into a months-long search for composer information, I was flabbergasted to realize that that was 13 years ago!  And, it wasn't even for a MIDI Week Single article, but for a Game Scores article.

P.P.S.  It's been nine years since our last Game Scores article.

Monthly Update: March, 2026

 

With our mid-month switch to an actual URL and not one directly connected with Blogger (although that's still where we do all of our editing), I found myself going through old articles.  Specifically, 12 years of MIDI Week Singles articles.  When we first started the article series back on TwoBoysAndTheirBlog back in 2014, we would typically link to videos we found on YouTube or directly upload them through Blogger ourselves.  And over the years, some of those videos we linked to essentially became dead links for one reason or another.  An account might have been deactivated through policy violations, or the account might have just taken the video down or made it private.  In one instance, the account toggled a switch somewhere that prevented the video from being linked to on a third-party website.

During this year (and possibly into next year?), I'll be updating the videos in our MIDI Week Single articles that have gone dormant.  I'm normally not one for going back and changing anything in our previously published articles as a matter of preservation, but in this case, I feel justified.  A key component of our MIDI Week Single series is sharing music, and if that music is no longer present and only the words remain, that's taking away 50%+ of why the article was published in the first place.  These videos will be uploaded to our MIDI Week Singles playlist up on YouTube with hyperlinks to their original article.  I might include updated information on the YouTube video, and/or include updated album art, but the information on the MIDI Week Singles article will remain as it was originally published.  Additionally, I have also created a MIDI Week Singles Archive playlist where I'll be uploading songs from the MIDI Week Singles articles we posted on TwoBoysAndTheirBlog 12 years ago.  I'll try to upload at least a song a week, which would bring us to January 2027, and that's not including the 84 MIDI Week Singles articles I need to update with updated YouTube videos.  The same goes for these videos, where I will include any information that's been updated from when we first posted up to 12 years ago.

It's a project currently consisting of 133 entries, but if you know me and my penchant for updating ID3 tags on any acquired video game soundtracks, this is the kind of project I feel that I thrive on.  At the moment, I won't have a schedule for replacing the MIDI Week Single videos from StageSelectStart, but starting today (Monday, March 2nd), I'll be uploading one video to the MIDI Week Singles Archive playlist until we run out of songs.

On the video game front, I've actually finished a couple of games, partially in thanks to The Squire wanting to play games like Castle Crashers.  We're now on a mission to unlock as many characters, which is going to take a while since a lot of characters can only be unlocked after beating the game with an unlocked character and every game with a new character starts at level 1.  On my own, though, I also finished Shank (this was actually at the beginning of December), and Cthulhu Saves the World.  I started in on Bastion, and I'm thinking that after that game, I'll probably pick up either Braid or Sword and Sorcery EP, you know, all those games from early Humble Indie Bundles that I only seemed to collect and never play.  I've also still been playing Ace Combat 7, although less frequently after crashing a lot during a particular nighttime harbor mission.  With The Squire, it's been a lot of Mario Kart World versus mode with all items turned off except for Kamek, and if you know about that item, then just imagine 24-48 Kameks zipping through the race knocking your racer off balance, turning you into a semi-random character, and creating some kind of obstacle in the course like large spike balls, flocks of parabidibuds, a gaggle of large Goombas, exploding Bob-ombs, and various types of Charging Chucks.  It's absolute chaos.  The Squire is also on a kick to unlock as many characters in Castle Crashers, some of which only unlock after beating the game with a specific character, and since unlocked levels are tied to specific characters, I'm either going to need to invest a couple of hundred hours in this game, or he'll lose interest within the year.

In the streaming/TV-verse, Conklederp and I have been making our way through season 2 of The Expanse, averaging about 20-30 minutes a night if I don't finish up nightly typings here before 10:30, otherwise we can make it through about an episode a night.  I also really want to start in on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms after thoroughly enjoying the graphic novels and the trilogy compilation novel.  I think we just need to get a password from someone so that we can log onto HBO Go/HBO MAX/MAX/HBO for the umteenth time.  And since we're talking screentime, I also picked up THX 1138 right after Robert Duvall passed away, and feeling like I should probably see this film.  I genuinely don't remember the last "new" movie I saw in the theatre, but I'm pretty certain it was after Himo and I saw Alien: Romulus.... right?

Huh......

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

At A Dark Bewitchin' Hour