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https://backloggd.com/u/thebluejay1994/
Personal Ratings
1★
5★

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Loved

Gained 100+ total review likes

2 Years of Service

Being part of the Backloggd community for 2 years

Popular

Gained 15+ followers

Best Friends

Become mutual friends with at least 3 others

Liked

Gained 10+ total review likes

Shreked

Found the secret ogre page

Noticed

Gained 3+ followers

Donor

Liked 50+ reviews / lists

Organized

Created a list folder with 5+ lists

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Created 10+ public lists

Roadtrip

Voted for at least 3 features on the roadmap

Favorite Games

Age of Empires: Gold Edition
Age of Empires: Gold Edition
The Beatles: Rock Band
The Beatles: Rock Band
BioShock
BioShock
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X
Silent Hill 3
Silent Hill 3

095

Total Games Played

000

Played in 2024

016

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Devo Presents: Adventures of the Smart Patrol
Devo Presents: Adventures of the Smart Patrol

Jan 28

Xplora 1: Peter Gabriel's Secret World
Xplora 1: Peter Gabriel's Secret World

Jan 28

Kid Pix Deluxe 3
Kid Pix Deluxe 3

Dec 04

Battlefield: Bad Company
Battlefield: Bad Company

Nov 21

Ghostwire: Tokyo
Ghostwire: Tokyo

Nov 20

Recently Reviewed See More

Review #2 - 2023

It's quirky. It's bizarre. It's incomprehensible. It's so unapologetically 90s, an era where the CD-ROM allowed for developers to take advantage of multimedia, and push the medium to its limits with reckless abandon. Videos, music, interactive graphics galore. You could do anything. Literally anything. There were no guidelines to how these things should be made, nor was there very much in the way of quality control. That's how you end up with products like this.

The game has you play as a member of the Smart Patrol (if I gather that correctly). Your job is to... well I actually don't know. You're thrust into this strange Factory Pomo designed world where you have hardly any time to explore it. You visit an area, only to be told you need to get back to your vehicle before the time runs out (I swear you only have 5 minutes to do anything). That's the gameplay really, if you can call it that. In true 90s gaming fashion, you don't have a clue what to do, and it's all down to doing things in a specific, unspecified order so you can progress. It expects you to start the game over, and over, and over again in order to get it right, but any person in their right mind would quit playing the moment it ends.

I'm not any person in their right mind.

I intend on returning to this game, and I intend on figuring this thing out. I'm a sucker for cheese like this. The aesthetic is enough to draw me in, and the scenes I did encounter, had me dying to uncover more. I don't know how involved DEVO was in the making of this game, but regardless, it has their abstract worldview written all over it. I for one, will be back. Everyone else, you'll be better off saving your sanity. Here, watch this guy play it.

Review #1 - 2023

Peter Gabriel, the artist, the activist, the appreciator of music from around the world. This CD-ROM experience brings you all 3 of these notions into his interactive point-and-click "secret world", where you'll discover not just his music, but music from around the globe, as it showcases several many artists from his label, Real World Studios, a recording label that provides a means for artists all over the world to record and share their music on a global scale. Not only that, you'll discover WOMAD, yet another opportunity started by Gabriel, that showcases these artists from around the world, live and on stage in a festival weekend setting. Real World and WOMAD are still going on to this day, so it's cool seeing it's early beginnings!

Given his love for world music, you'll learn about different cultures, and the instruments they wield. It's actually an idea I've had for a long time to create a game where you explore a globe, and learn about music and how culture spreads. This game has that going on in a smaller scale, and I absolutely adore what it's trying to achieve.

There's all kinds of oddities to find in this game, so definitely explore your options, and keep an eye out for Easter eggs along the way for you to click on! I will however warn you, that there is a section that brings awareness to the horrible human rights violations that were going on at the time, and really, still going on today. It's a video about his WITNESS organization, a project that aims to bring cameras to people all over the world, so they can film and bring to light the injustices happening on the daily. Just know, the video has some horrifying and graphic footage.

Xplora is a testament to Gabriel's care for the world. It goes beyond the music and culture. He aims to help us get a little bit closer to a world where a culture and its peoples aren't held back by the cruel injustices we see time and time again. The fact that Real World, WOMAD, and WITNESS is still around today, proves that his outreach is doing something good. We should all aim to do something bigger than ourselves to make the world a better place, and I find music to be an incredible tool to do just that.

Review #7 - 2022

This is a game I hold dearly to my heart. I remember it fondly, but never had a means to relive it, until I discovered the wonderful world of Virtual Machines. Indeed, I did what I needed to do, installed the game into my virtual XP, and voilà, that ear worm of an intro starts playing, and I was transported back into that elementary school computer lab. Things were about to get wacky!

And it's exactly as I remembered! Wacky brushes and pens and stamps galore. Many different ways to manipulate your paintings with the whisk tool, as well as all kinds of textures to make your digital paintings pop! There's backgrounds and sounds to go with your image to bring them to life, a stick of dynamite to start fresh, and of course, the unforgettable undo button. I click it, and I get an autotuned "Now wait a minute!" to fix my mistake. Gosh I missed this game.

Kid Pix began as a way to make digital painting fun, and it certainly succeeded, inspiring many children like myself back in the day, to create and let their imaginations soar as they did so. It's still much fun to mess with as an adult, and I'm certain that if you share this with the next generation, they'll enjoy it too!