I wanted to try out Red Crimes: Hidden Murders because it was produced by Discovery Channel’s forensic mystery channel thing; Identification Discovery, advertised somewhat real forensics, and it has very pretty artwork.

So I did, and unfortunately I have nothing special to report.  It’s a typical freemium game in the most generic way. I played until the first criminal was arrested.  That’s as far as I could get after exhausting all my energy and gold points, which took about an hour and a half.  Not the worst demo.  Energy charges at 1 per 3 minutes, and you need 16 to play the next mini game.  However, running out of energy isn’t the only concern.  There are timers all over the place that they want you to pay “gold” to skip.  As usual you can watch a video ad to get gold, but a 30 second ad gets you a whopping 3 pieces.  Can’t do anything with that.

I’m not going to do the math, but I guestimate that this game costs just over $0.50 an hour to play with minimal interruptions.  If the levels get harder it will likely get more expensive.  Is it worth it?

Not as it is.  I’m going to assume that I played as much as the developers wanted to give as a demo and it all felt very tutorial-ish.  Even after the main character stopped narrating my every move the mini games remained mindlessly simple.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers kept the game design open to be an idle clicker, which unfortunately might have been the more engaging game play choice.

“Gameplay” has you upgrade your police station, so far that just means reskinning the walls; having your police force patrol areas of the town for cash (?!); solving cases via hidden object, drag-to-reveal or collect, and puzzle-piece-match mini games to ultimately reclaim that area of town so you can buy visual upgrades for it. 

I can’t vouch for any accuracy in the forensics because it’s so limited by the simplistic game mechanics.  Some levels even have you hand off an object for another character to work on while you wait (or pay) for the level to complete without doing anything.  Definitely not compelling compared to actual 100% free games of the same genre on the Play store.

There’s an over arching story, which does the job well enough, but the cookie cutter characters don’t seem to have any real stakes in it.  

While the artwork is pretty, you’ve seen all the good stuff already in the advertising.  There’s no variation or animation of the characters in game.

So the game is pretty sub par unless you’re really desperate, or this really hits a specific niche for you.  Overall it really doesn’t feel like the developers want you to play their game.  All the dollar signs around the wait times feel like a warning rather than an invitation.

source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/181467903259

Oh, why does the excellent youtube game documentarian take months, years even, between videos? He does his own amazing soundtracks and sells them on the side. What a fucking inspiration.

source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/181063263064

Went to NN’s final show.  It was great.  Not sure if I’ve ever gotten “in to it” so hard at a concert before.  Probably was because of the great company of my best friend and my girlfriend.  

NN hadn’t changed at all since my girlfriend and I saw them while on our first concert date (excluding the concert we decided to start dating at).  She doesn’t remember them. source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/181058091284

Went out to see Best F®iends Volume One with Greg Sestero in audience.  It was rather on whim, and I feel bad for the local chiptune show that really could have used the support, but it was still alright.  Weird having leather-clad Greg step up and slyly jab a non-present Tommy, who remains essentially exactly the same character in this movie; a character who I assume is at its core Tommy Wiseau.  

The movie was decent too.  Probably the only kind of role that Tommy can genuinely play.  Movie came across as a very artsy production.  Greg admitted accurately that it was a long film, but they did a decent job keeping it entertaining.

I couldn’t bring myself to stay up for the sequel. source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/181058445904

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