I've got quite a collection of spoopy games built up now, and as I tried to play through a couple of such games last year, I thought I'd try and get through some this year as well.

For my first game of the season (and let's face it, probably my last), I decided to give Devotion another attempt. This thing totally bugged out on me last year, and I didn't really enjoy it much, but I thought it deserved another go just to show support to the team that made it.

So this time, I re-downloaded it and played it on another machine, and wouldn't you know, it actually worked. Not that that was necessarily a good thing.

For such a short game, this thing was an absolute slog. I hated the slow trudging around the apartment, and really hated the scripted parts that made you walk even slower. I guess I just don't have much patience for this kind of thing these days. Hell, it even threatened to spoil Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and there were way more other good things going for that than this.

The puzzle elements were very light, as were the horror elements. I mean, I guess you could call this a game, rather than just a walking simulator, but it's a close call.

The story was all kinds of weird, and I still don't think I fully understood what was going on. It seemed to be about a guy going through psychological trauma, and re-living twisted memories of the really, really stupid things he did in the past, which ended up shattering his family.

It's not a game I'll ever visit again. But at least it's finally done. And it wasn't like it took that long out of my day.

Just recently went to a wargaming market for the first time, where sellers were peddling all kinds of goods. Mostly it was second hand 40K stuff as well as lots of historical miniatures. But there were some other interesting things as well.

After somehow resisting the urge to buy a 40K Stormlord for £30 (I really wanted it, but have not really used my other 2 super heavy tanks yet), I only came away with some new MDF bridges.

It's not taken long to get these pieces finished, but they needed some modifications to make them usable. Firstly, I noticed the side panels protruded beneath the lower surface of the bridges. I guessed these panels could potentially dig in to my polystyrene hills and damage them. It was also very evident that the bridges were not very strong.

So to fix both issues, I added support and thickness to the underside of the bridges, using coffee stirrers and thick card.

After that, it was an easy task to add some paint and textures.

I've managed a few other little things these last couple of weeks, after finally varnishing my last lot of completed terrain, and starting the work needed to finish my Eldar MDF terrain. The power generators are going to need the most work. I really didn't like the look of the gaps in the wooden crystals, so I've started building up some filler, so that I can try and sand them down and make them more crystal-ish. Thinking about it now, there's probably 101 better ways of doing this. But whatever.

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I've not painted any miniatures since way back in June some time. As I assumed, the hot weather forced me away, and I have not yet found the motivation to go back now the weather is cooler again.

So much for making this a huge painting year.

Still, I'm looking to get back into it now, and have varnished the Epic Orks that needed it.

In addition, I'd not lined up all my 40K Imperial Guard for many years. So have done that as well.

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It's been a long time coming, but we finally managed to have a little refresher battle of our new Epic rules recently.

In this one, Gareth dipped his toes into the game for the first time, and took control of the Orks against my Chaos.

It was a short, close and bloody battle which ended with Gareth picking up the win. Even though I had more units at the end, I just didn't have enough left to trouble the two Stompas.

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I recently enjoyed the chance to get some board games back to the table.

Up first was Munchkin, which I was playing for only the second time. Gareth managed to pull out the win while me and my sister furiously kicked at the door to level 10.

Then my two new games from back in February got their chances. It took us a few games to fully figure out how to play There's Been A Murder, as the game rules are a bit vague, but we got there in the end. To be honest, it did not seem that difficult, at least for 4 players, as we won all the games we played.

One game that is quite hard, provided you are playing as Mister X that is, is Scotland Yard. I was up first, and it did not take long for the other players to wrangle me into an inescapable corner. Gareth then tried his hand as the murderer, and gave us the run around far longer than I did. But even then, some lucky moves by our assisting police officer kept him on his toes long enough for us to close in and capture him also.

What an absolute ballache I've had trying to put together all the rest of my TTCombat MDF terrain from last year.

As I stated a while back on this blog, the Eldar pieces simply hadn't been cut out properly by the laser. So it took forever to work my way through all those tiny little pieces and trim them out with a blade.

Nevertheless, I got the stargates assembled, but I had an issue with the barricades that came with them. I didn't like how the laser etching was only on one side. So I glued two of them back to back and trimmed down the supports to allow this.

However, when I got to the end of this process, I still had two barricades left that I couldn't use, as one of the barricades was missing its two supports. Sure, I broke one of the other supports while I was trimming them down to glue the others together, so probably couldn't have made the last double-sided barricade anyway. But that's not the point. It became very apparent that someone at TTCombat can't count, when I assembled the generators, and found there were three little wooden "pins" that were also missing. I had to glue in some spare bits of wood, then trim them down when they were fully secured in place.

But the worst was yet to come, when I started to assemble Compund Chakwas. Now this kit was from their 10mm range, but I thought it could be used as some kind of silo station in both 6mm and 28mm. That's the entire reason I bought it.

So imagine how hard I sighed when I opened the packaging to find completely the wrong kit inside, even though Compund Chakwas was clearly on the label.

I'm guessing I bought it far too long ago to return it, so I decided to just go ahead and make whatever it was and hope it was usable. It turned out to be a kit called Compound Drack. I wasn't too unhappy with this, as it reminds me of the Hadley's Hope colony from Aliens. And though it's a little big for 6mm games, it will probably just about still work. There's no way I can use it in 28mm games though, that's for sure. Unless it's a base for Snotlings or something.

I haven't fully glued it all together yet, as I may incorporate it into a large 6mm android factory I've been thinking of making for ages.

But to continue the trend, there's also a piece missing from this kit as well, as one of the doors is not there. I guess I'll just have to make my own. Not the hardest thing to do, but still a pain.

Let's just say I won't be using TTCombat for this stuff ever again.

After putting the Spectrum platform to rest, I've been looking at finishing off some of the other retro games I used to play in the past. As I still have quite a few Amiga games to attempt, I decided to move forward with some of those first.

After looking down the list of games, I saw many of the Amiga titles group together quite nicely. This first group I'm going to attempt are all games based on movies.

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I just had to try this game, which is based on my favourite movie of all time, Jaws. I had this as a kid but never really got anywhere in it, but I figured I could do better than that as an adult. I quickly learned I was very wrong.

There's no way to mince words here. This game is utter trash, and the people who made it should be ashamed of themselves. Not only is it frustratingly tedious and boring to play, it has absolutely nothing at all to do with either the book or the film. Well, except that there's a shark in it. A shark which you never see, because 99% of your time is spent trying to make your way through an underwater labyrinth where the shark does not go.

And why do you have to go into the underwater caves? Why, to find pieces to a big gun that can kill the shark of course! I mean, why would the gun be anywhere else?

Anyway, I remembered all this going in, and I kind-of knew what to expect. I set myself up to give it as good a go as possible, and during my first forays into the game I started to make a map of the underwater maze, so I could plot where the parts to the gun were. Several attempts didn't see me getting very far, as the submersible is hard to control and many, many things are out to kill. I started watching a longplay of the game on Youtube, marking on the map with simple arrows where that player went and where the parts were.

However, it was watching this footage that turned me right off the game. Whoever was playing it was incredibly good and very well-practised and very patient. And even then it was taking them a long time to get around and find the parts. I decided I didn't have time for that, and promptly gave up. Life's too short.

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Another game I had was the game of the 1989 Batman movie. Trying to play this again really surprised me with how hard it was.

Ultimately, this turned out to be another game I just couldn't face pushing through. Batman just moves too slow and clumsily for the game to feel any good.

Add in that all of the takedowns must be at range, with Batman taking damage if he even brushes past an enemy, and things get even worse. I mean, you can't even throw Batarangs diagonally, instead having to use the grapple as a weapon if you want to do this. The problem here is, the grapple takes ages to go out, then ages to come back in, and Batman can't move while doing it. Plus, he can't throw out the grapple if he's standing near a ladder, for some reason.

Still, I was making slow but decent progress through the first level using save states, but then, upon my sudden death, I realised the game had a time limit. Trying to go through the level again at a much higher pace just saw me getting twonked left and right, and even using save states I just ran out of patience.

What's frustrating here is I know for a fact I got further as a kid even without the save state functionality, as I distinctly remember driving the Batmobile, and shooting out grapples to help turn round corners (or mostly missing them, in my case).
But here I could just not manage it.

But oh well, I gave it a go. Now on with another...

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This was a game I remember giving a good go when I was a young lad, based on the 80s action classic: Robocop.

This was way easier to get through than the other Amiga games I've attempted recently, but I still had to use some save states to pull through.

When I got to the end, it all felt a bit familiar, but I think it's highly unlikely I beat it as a kid, unless I threw some cheats at it or something.

But anyway, I've actually managed to finish one, and I can move on with something else...