So I am working my way through the entire catalogue of games that come along with the "Extra" package of the PlayStation Plus membership. Previously if you were a basic member you got 2-3 "free" games per month. With Extra, I unlocked more than 100 games at once. I have no illusion that all of these games are good. In fact, I expect that most of them are going to be duds and I believe that Sony probably intentionally chose most of these because they know that nobody is going to buy them.
In my rundown of attempting to play every single one of the games I am only skipping any AAA studio games because it is already pretty well-known if they are good or not - most of the time they are good. Instead I am going to try all the games that most people have never heard of, probably wouldn't consider buying, and otherwise would go unnoticed. Spiritfarer was a delightful experience that I probably never would have tried if it were not for my Extra membership. Unfortunately almost all of the others, including Gabbuchi have been kind of a waste of time.
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Gabbuchi is cute and simple enough but the major problem I had with it is that there really isn't much reason for this game to exist on a console. It plays much more like a mobile game. It has cute sound effects, the creature you are controlling has very basic animation, and the music if fun. However, even though I regularly complain about games being too complicated, this is more of one of those experiences where it is far too simplistic to be played on a huge screen.
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Every single level is a puzzle where you have to get to the heart in order to complete it. Your creature consumes any blocks that are the same color that it happens to be at the time, and you can change colors by pressing a button. That and the control stick are the only buttons that are used in this game.
I could see pretty early on that the only way this game could stay interesting would be if the puzzles became more and more tedious and after 20 or so levels I started to find the game unnecessarily frustrating rather than challenging. It kind of reminded me of a game I played many many years ago called Soloman's Key where the game was solid, but it was just too damn frustrating to be fun.
This isn't exactly that sort of experience because very little actually moves on the screen with you whereas in Soloman's Key stuff was coming at you from all directions.
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I would imagine that they throw other elements into the game as it progresses but just like I said at the start of this journey, I am not going to devote more than one hour to a game that doesn't immediately grab my attention the way that games did back in the day when we had to go to a store and pick up a physical copy of the game. In those days you were basically stuck with whatever you bought, so you were going to learn to love it I guess. I don't feel the same way about games these days, especially ones that I am simply leasing with the PS Plus membership.
I think Gabbuchi is cute and fun enough to play on a tablet or even a phone, but on a 50 inch screen across the room from me, it just doesn't make sense. I don't think I even played a full hour of this and I would imagine that most people would probably end up feeling the same way.
On to the next one!
Games played so far in my trip through all the "Extra" games on Playstation Plus
- Windbound (survival game with rogue-like elements - not recommended)
- Magicka 2 (top-down humorous multiplayer hack and slash-sort with immense spell system - maybe recommended)
- Tearaway: Unfolded (charming casual 3D platformer with inventive graphics and gameplay designed for all ages - recommended for casual players)
- Spiritfarer (casual simulation / resource-management style game with an extremely good story - recommended for all)
- Observation (point and click survival sort of... interactive game of sorts set in space - found it very boring after just one hour and do not recommend
- Gabbuchi (simplistic puzzle game that I feel is better suited to mobile devices. Not recommended on consoles)