We move on from Totally Spies! to Betty Boop's Double Shift and sadly a friend of mine had to leave as their gran had passed away recently and she was a big fan of Betty Boop, which is totally understandable whilst I was streaming it and so I carried on as much as I could, but this game got very boring fairly quickly!

Though not quite that old, but the most I have seen of Betty Boop has been that great scene from Roger Rabbit that I reference in video title there where she says how she's working there because toons are only popular when they're in colour these days.

Anyway, the gameplay. In case you didn't guess from the title, it's essentially the game "Diner Dash" but with Betty Boop, related characters and art-style from that time period (but in colour) and with the addition of at the end of the shift, she does a dance that's performed in a semi-QTE fashion which certainly didn't help in this.

So you take orders, bring them to the kitchen, take orders to the customers, bring them mints and things if they need it, clean up the plates and have to serve ALL the customers by yourself, just like any other Diner Dash copy/past game out there, but with this one having the difference with Betty Boop in it and a little dancing section with her, which is essentially the animation of a Betty Boop gif. There's not really much I can actually talk about in regards to this game and I can't even recommend it because there's nothing here. Maybe if you're a MASSIVE fan of Betty Boop I guess as I've not seen her in anything else...

Also, am I the only one that thinks her uncle or grandad or whatever is kinda creepy?

Gameplay/Stream

Currently this game is my addiction at the moment as all of it's flashing lights and sounds is keeping me coming back to it, like how it's designed to exploit people like me to swindle cash out of me and then point and laugh at me for doing so. As of yet, it hasn't convinced me to put money down, but damn is it tempting sometimes and I'll get into that.

First, the gameplay:

...or lack-there-of. This is, as the title suggests, one of those idle games that play themselves and most of the time you will be watching bad guys blow up into coins and bosses drop sacks that contain the secondary currency while you sit there, try to get events done, then look at the time and wonder what the fuck happened to your time that this game just stole from you?!?!

The intention is that you click on an enemy, you do damage from somekind of fire blast. You can level this up so you do more damage, however, it doesn't scale well so when you're fighting higher level enemies you can't do anything to them! This is where the heroes come in.

The heroes fight by themselves, usually attacking when their bar fills and often killing an enemy, but this also scaled badly as you will find yourself fighting enemies that are too tough for the current highest level you can afford for your heroes, but here's where the rogue-lite elements play out. You can leave missions and you gain favour. That favour, becomes a passive % bonus to the amount of coins that are dropped. So for example, 10 favour gets you 10% so it's a direct trade off. Pretty nice huh?

...yeah I didn't think you'd fall for that. Currently I struggle to get to area 250 on some places and I have favour in the billions! That should give me characters with levels so eyeball meltingly high that I can bat away anything, but since they often reuse the exact same sprites and the areas cycle over and over then you can find at the beginning of a stage you're batting imps and demons aside like nothing, but later bears and wolves are giving you real grief and are even so strong your attacks to 0 damage! Or atleast, it looks like 0, but their HP is so high that the health bar looks like it doesn't even wince in response to an attack.

Your heroes all get specials and passives that can do things such as boost eveyone's base damage, nuke all the enemies on the field and everything inbetween. They take a while to recharge though so it may help you clear one area, but then you could get knocked back in the following area because it's not recharged.

You can get cute little familiars, but in my experience the only way you can get them is via gems or other paid ways. These are extremely useful as they passively click for you so you don't end up breaking your finger of suffering from RSI!

Equipment! What party can't get equipment! Well, here equipment gives passive buffs to the characters, some giving a passive damage buff to ALL the characters on the field so it's best to bring your best equipped along, but this too is open to monitisation as I'll cover shortly.

Potions are another little boost to improve your party. They last for a limited time with the more powerful ones lasting up to a day or even until that adventure ends!

Feats are something characters gain at a certain level, however, you are limited in your selection and the number of slots you unlock is few and far between. That said, there are advantages such as once it's unlocked, it remains unlocked no matter how many times you reset which can be pretty neat. You only have a few to choose from and others are unlocked in drum roll loot box- I mean, chests!

Yes, chests. As you adveture you'll come across two kinds of basic chests. Silver and Gold. Silver holds some gold for you to use in your current adventure along with the potential of a potion and equipment. However, the equipment has a rarity value and silver only gives you Common to Uncommon for the main starting 12 characters and that's it! You get these in the form of a set of cards. Silver only offering you three.

Gold on the other hand has gives you equipment from uncommon to rare, bounty contracts to gain rewards for what you would've spent time to get, blacksmith contracts for leveling up equipment and you get five cards instead of three. A few other characters are also covered by these gold chests too and the price, in gems is very different. Silver is 50 whilst gold is 500. A massive difference when you seem to only get gems after a boss fight and even then, often under 10. You could also buy the gold ones for $5.99! Bloody rip off, considering.

Then you have heroes who have their own unique chests. These are for all kinds of heroes that have been unlocked in events and such, like most recently the event that's going on I unlocked "The Dark Urge" from BG3, a game I've yet to actually play and doesn't have this microtransaction BS in it.

Numerous champsions have their own exclusive chests so you can't get their equipment even in the normal golden chests that are on market and you have to pay a premium for them which, during the current event, is either a grind of 7,500 flags or $5.99. Same price as a regular gold chest, but you have the change to get equipment for that specific character!

The other bit I find a little bit insideous is that they advertise whenever they or a partner is streaming or posting up YouTube videos and each time, you get a code to unlock an "Electrum" chest which often gives you the majority of things you find in a gold chest, but also a handful of gems to try and get you hooked into that economy.

There's also multiple skins for everyone, because of course. You can't just get skins, you need to buy them or unlock them in special events and then there's these things called "Modron" Parts which I have no idea what they are as I've not progressed beyond the first main campaign as I've been sucked into the events going and trying to accomplish them because my brain wants a full set of items for the collection. Atleast, I've stopped it from buying into it.

It may seem fun with the gameplay images, but trust me, it's not. Especially if you are susceptible to these kinds of monetisation scams I highly recommend you stay the fuck away from this! It's so full of microtransactions all over the place that you could easily end up penniless.

Stay away for your own safety.

Edit: Forgot to mention, they seem to have this nasty habit of referring to their micro-transactions as "DLC" when in reality it isn't. It's micro-transactions. It comes off much like when Bethesda were trying to call their paid mods "Mini DLCs" and I can't stand this disgusting position that these kinds of predatory companies like to stand.

Now yes I did choose this for Cringetober 2022, but that's more to do with how often people would look at this series and judge it negatively where as many people like myself enjoyed this and even uncovered...as a friend would call it...people's "Special Interests" in regards to a lot of the suggestive situations that the girls find themselves in the numerous torture methods and when you look back you wonder how it got past the censors...

Now the game itself...there's not much to really hate here at all.

The story follows the show, with each level being an episode of the TV show, including their first mission where their handler/Mission Briefer was playing the role for them to fulfil their test assignment before getting involved in real missions. I did always love his terrible puns and they make a come back in this game considering some are copied from the episode and the other can be in regards to descriptions of the gadgets themselves, which you get given to you, much like the show, as if some psychic knows exactly which one is going to be useful and which one might make it too easy. Even Q from James Bond didn't have that much foresight!

The gameplay is a mixture of platforming/puzzle platforming along with mini-games scattered in that are unique to each stage, including the final mission of the game where you travel in a submarine and fight a villain in a mech! Deaths are represented with a image from the shows where the girls messed up and success is shown with the three of them jumping together in a victory hug!

Like Disney Princess, this was actually quite enjoyable, but it isn't quite as good as that game was. That game I was expecting crap but got a really solid platformer with unique stages and here we have a solid platformer, but not much else I can add beyond that if you're a fan of the show, you'll like this too!

Stream/Gameplay

This game I'm not certain what to really say about it. The story is about these four girls that meet up and they all want to become the next "Princess on Ice" being the name of the champion who wins at all these skating championships and each of them excels in a certain area whilst one of them is an all-rounder that's average in each area. These translate into the gameplay which his played very much like a rhythm game as you attempt to pull off all kinds of moves and impress the exact three same judges each time.

Due to being a DS game, they make you try to do all kinds of different things with the stylis and you also have to buy upgrades to your character before each dance, in a psudo RPG style and outfits that are meant to impact your score, depending on the song and the style...at least that's how I remember it sounding but if it actually did anything under the hood I have no actual idea. No obvious "+1 to this song performance" or anything obvious like that. You're kinda meant to make your own judgement I get, but since Girl Zone said I suck at dress sense, I imagine I probably messed up.

I chose this game based on the cover, however, that cover is a LIE!

The cover you see above and on the actual box, is a total lie, using the wrong art style, much like how My Boyfriend did, only where as that made the game try to look better (or I suspect was from the PS2 version or whatever edition is better) in this case the game is using this art to try and advertise itself as "Western Friendly" as the actual art-style is anime with these chibi-like little girls running around and that you play as. During my stream I looked at these covers to partially prove that the game I'm playing IS the box art I have on my screen AND I also learnt that there is a sequel with what looks like, almost exactly the same cover as the first game!

The cheapness doesn't end there, however. There's numerous alerts and messages that aren't translated from their original Japanese, including right at the end where a big set of Kanji appears, with no translation or anything to tell you what it's saying as if the developers couldn't give a fuck about the audience who bought this game. It's just yet another shovel-ware game that was thrown on the DS that puts the "Nintendo Seal of Quality" to shame, as if anyone actually respected it anymore these days.

Beyond these issues, the gameplay is solid and as cringy as it was to play this, it wasn't actually terrible. It didn't make me want to strangle the developers and there was clearly some effort put into the game, though not much in regards to linguistics and the girl's personalities are pretty funny and cute too!

All things considered, it's pretty mediocre and inoffensive. It's certainly nothing like My Boyfriend or Girl Zone, which I had also streamed that month, which went out of their way to insult my intelligence and that of anyone who dared play those games!

Stream/Gameplay

This game, advertised as a sequel to Hitman 2016, was meant to continue the support where that one left off where we'd get a whole new season AND another one further down the line to fill out that "live service" begging that big publishers like to turn all their games into perpetual money machine, however, that fell apart as I'm sure you all know by now with "Hitman 3" or as it's also known as "Hitman: World of Assassination" as if trying to cover up what they'd done and how much money they'd swindled out of people.

The game itself feels like an interesting side-grade with the addition of having 47 able to hide in tall grass and bushes, much like Talion from Shadow of Mordor/War (the game loads up with a WB logo, so I guess they bought this game from Square Enix?) and even earlier stages were altered to allow this, however, the only one I got to try from the previous game were the training stages which added it.

Then there's the UI change in regards to the item selection where instead of filling up the screen and blocking your view, it comes up as a small dark bar at the bottom of the screen so you always get a second to look at where you are before you decide to pull out something that might be an illegal item like guns for a civilian outfit and ect.

There also seems to be a personal level system for your account, however, I have no idea what benefits it'd actually give you, if any. Especially at this point where the game is not purchasable anymore and you have to buy the newest one AND associated DLC.

I still liked the story and like the previous one it ends with a cliff-hanger that suggests some dark secret hanging over the whole thing, however, I'm still going to review this game with a bad score because of the fact it was meant to be made as an apology for the previous game, yet they did it again and we have a third game that I'm going to take the time to get all the items from the mastery because some of those items are just TOO good. Like the baton, pistol and knife that can be concealed and unable to be found in a pat-down. Would've been really helpful for some of these missions!

Edit: Something I should note is both this and the 3rd game use brief cases, which is a great way of carrying your weapons, like the sniper rifle, to one location without having to dress up like a security guard and being able to walk around unnoticed as the big rifle strapped to one's back generally let's people know that you're up to no-good.

Though you can't get this game anymore, it seems, I'll share with you all my feelings about this game anyway as I did really enjoy it!

I remember this game being released and they wanted to create it in a "Live Service" kind of way where you bought the game and there'd be a subscription for each and every season, however, only one season was done for this game! Beyond that, they did make some fun side missions and challenges too, but I'll get into that later.

You play as Agent 47, of course, doing training to see if he's eligible to join this group to carry out missions that will be handed to him via his handler. The first few missions are to make certain you get the hold of the mechanics and such until you go for your final test mission where you take everything you've learnt and then apply it to the simulation where you need to assassinate someone being protected by the Russian army and after that, the real missions start.

As typical in the early Hitman games, you have a target and they must be eliminated, but as the missions get more complex you have to do things like destroy someone's project or arrange for their death to be accidental. Something like that.

The missions can be fairly short, depending on how you approach a situation and how you sneak up on your target to dispatch them the best way! There's only a certain number of levels, however, why I love is the ability to track opportunities, especially with my memory and attention span being so terrible it really helps. The more opportunities you do, the more your mastery of a stage goes up and as you achieve a new level of mastery, you unlock something to make the mission more interesting like a new starting location, the ability to bring in a selection of weapons into designated locations or even whole new weapons! Some of the best I found were the concealable baton so you can knock people out quickly and it's never found when you get frisked. Unlike what I remember of some of the earlier games, you don't unlock new weapons and thing just by picking it up and carrying it out, but through this mastery system, which I like because it can be fun seeing different ways for the targets to be killed. Especially as often these are people who angered the wrong people be being a nasty or dangerous individual.

After the main game there's a selection of side missions and such that came in the form of DLC and the original idea of this game was to be a live service and be updated with seasons one after another, but we only got the first season with this one. I've yet to give the other two a go as I have been going mad trying to get all the achievements on this, however, I may lose interest. We'll see.

The story itself is interesting and has some links to 47s past, however, I don't want to give you spoilers and want you to find that out for yourself! ;)

Yet another game that's been covered as part of my Cringetober 2022 event and as terrible as cringy as the last game was ,this one was really damn cringe and yet boring too!

The name caught my attention, as someone who loves geeks too, however, the game ended up being absolutely filled with Rube Goldberg machines and each level is a different kind of machine to accomplish a new mission, however, most missions are usually involving balloon popping or using a machine to solve something that can be simply done by getting off your ass and picking stuff up!

I did enjoy using the power of physics to beat the bullies, however, this one girl seems to be into these geeks and how are they not going to start fighting each other over her? Maybe I'm thinking too hard on this, but the creators thought too little. Just wanted to shove out a game onto the DS and call it a day. I feel bad for that system having so much shovelware!

You have 100 levels of building these machines, adding new mechanics and such to accomplish a simple task! It's soooo long and damn boring! I felt like my brain cells were melting when I was streaming this!

Stream/Gameplay

A fun little game that my late BF had introduced me to. The music is hilarious and fun along with the concept of playing as these Hill Billies who are the only ones out there to fight and save the world from an alien invasion!

Beyond this one stream I haven't actually played the game too much. Some of it due to painful memories and also how the music was claimed by some BS third party thanks to YouTube and allowing these crappy claims. Still great fun to play this though and also on GOG you get to download the entire sound track too!

Returning with another Cringetober game, I play this one that I chose for the same reason as many of the others. That it looks all pinky and girly and see exactly how bad it is.

Now, I'm not a fan of the show and I felt that the game was an ok ARPG like Zelda, or more apt, Alcahest for the SNES that I did also stream. No real complex bits to levelling up from what I remember but the story covers the TV show by showing off various moments with short clips after boss fights or when progressing to a major part of the story.

Gameplay/Stream

Of course I had to get this too! I got to use this to get all the games I had on the first decade and the terrible Tiberium Twilight which I have VERY low hopes for, urgh.

I'm only voting this one lower because of a few things. One is that this was a tiny game-case because all the stuff was Digital Only. That part I can kinda understand, however, it was ONLY to be activated on Origin. The horrible service EA put together, claiming they'd sell games for cheaper and when they did make it they...didn't.

The collection itself is great value for money though as you get so much and can revisit that nostalgia of getting into the crazy universe of Red Alert or the alien radioactive glow of Tiberium.

This was a "must have" collection for me as I didn't become a PC gamer until late in the 00s and so as much as I loved playing C&C on the PS1 back in the day, these games benefit far more from the old Mouse and Keyboard. Especially considering moving all over the map and so on.

This complete collection contained a large number of the games I had never actually played before now, such as C&C Renegade which was a quite fun FPS set in the original C&C universe where the GDI always seem to win. Personally, I'm very much on team Kane. KANE LIVES!

Sadly I have lost my physical discs, thanks to my brother who often gets drunk, sells or loses things all the time so I won't see that ever again, but I'm glad I still have them all in digital on....Origin...yuck.

One hell of a fun game. I enjoyed every moment of this game as even though it is more simplistic than Dungeon Keeper 2, the mechanics work well and with two separate campaigns it's quite interesting, but the annoying this is that there aren't that many. There are still MANY hours you can replay the missions. I felt it was a little short, however it was still very enjoyable with the same narrator from the Stanley Parable doing his thing and the many different comical references like the "Bloody Wedding" mission with so much Game of Thrones references as well as several other moments, including the Narrator making fun of the heroes dying, you when you fail a mission and even himself at times.

I'd highly recommend this to anyone who's a Dungeon Keeper 2 as they do some new things, but it's a lot more fun. Sadly you can't capture heroes to torture or turn to your side or use their bodies to create new units like vampires, but it's a awful lot of fun.

One of the major issues is that unlike DK2 or War for the Overworld, the animations are very slow. Especially when digging without upgrades (though you can speed them up with a slap. However, unlike the aforementioned games, you don't have to claim squares to start building and can do so immediately. You can also buy the production items to place into the room so they need to be larger for more items so it doesn't matter what shape the room is, as long as it's big enough for the items in question.

This game I ended up finding a lot more fun that I had imagined when I started looking over it, but after witnessing my streaming friend playing this, though I now have forgotten which one it was!

Anyway, the game I found scratched an itch that I was really missing ever since completing Thief 2, due to the time sneaking around, stealing valuable items (and unlocking new weapons and upgrades) and then keeping everything in mind in regards to what your mission is, often fleeing before the authorities arrive and getting away with having finished your job which often involves theft and vandalism with people paying you to mess up each-other's place!

With the set up having unlimited time (until you start off the alarm) you can take as much time as possible setting up a plan to pick up or destroy whatever items as quickly as possible before getting to the escape point! The options are limitless in how you go about it and with the destructive environment you have limitless options. More so when you unlock all kinds of items making destruction easier and building items to make it possible to build bridges like I had done or, in one case, tie up a bunch of safes in a lorry so I could carry out the impossible to move safes in one go!

I'm sure others will find far better ways to complete levels and levels are also repayable so it's a hell of a lot of fun!

There's more stuff coming out and I can't wait to play/review all that extra content!

A really fun DLC that I had a lot of fun with! The story continues after the end of the main game where you end up finding out about your past and then these strange roots begin spreading from the far cold north. Not to mention, people were being slowly transformed and acting strange wherever these vines go and you believe it to be a mutant who had plant powers, but was banished from your home many years ago, wishing revenge so the stalkers have to leave once more, trying to hunt him down and find out what has inspired this recent and unfocused attack as Novasect were also being adapted and attacked too.

More fun relic to unearth to get more upgrades and new more powerful weapons to take on new dangerous robots and various mutants that had been possessed by the vines. There's also a new stalker who joins the team who has a moose head and can spew fire!

Just more of the fun from the first game and I'd totally want to see much more of this in the future!

Stream Gameplay of the main game: https://youtu.be/k4pcCMZzBnI

Note: Only last played since Update 7. Game is still in early access to take this review with a pinch of salt.

I found myself getting very addicted to this game. I love the whole resource management and creating your own factories in regards to exploiting the resources of the world and making advanced components to send up the space elevator.

Lizzard doggo is best doggo.

The wildlife are interesting and also quite dangerous too. I do love the different options you can get for power, but that you also have an issue with nuclear power plants producing Nuclear Waste and also certain other resources that can be used for all kinds of things.

No matter how many hours I've spent on the game, the world is so interesting and impressive. I'm often so lost, but not in a bad way. I find myself spending hours just observing and destroying nature to get wood and leaves for biomass. Not to mention looking for power slugs that can be made into energy cores that speed different machines, finding hard drives to get alternative recipes (some being much easier to produce than the others) and the artifacts that the voice desperately requests the items in a way that comes off as nefarious, but at this time they have no actual function, but I assume they will in the future.

I made a video in earlier development, around update 5 or 6 I think: https://youtu.be/UV-ZjJSI2ZA