Concrete Genie: Game review (PS5)

A few years ago I fell in love with Playstation Plus' game Concrete Genie (affiliate link). This little gem about a boy being bullied by his schoolmates should't have had that effect on me. 

 

 

Concrete Genie bullies

In general this topic traumatizes me. Bullying is the reason why I didn't like Life Is Strange. That is the reason why I couldn't play as the killer in my all time favorite game, Friday the 13th: The Game.

So why Concrete Genie managed to steer clear of that trauma?

The reason must be the adorable spirits, the Genies. I can't get enough of them. I'm totally in love with them. I could spend hours just watching them.

 

 

 

Concrete Genie video game

In Concrete Genie you play as a boy called Ash, who is living near a dark town of Denska. Some time ago something terrible happened to Denska, and darkness consumed it. But now Ash finds a magic paintbrush, and he is then able to bring the town back to light. With his new friends, the genies. 

Say no to Move

By default on Playstation the game's setting has the painting minigame on Move motion function. If you hate Move as much as I do, be sure to change that setting. Then the painting is done with the right stick, and it's much easier that way. 

Ugh, I had so much trouble with Heavy Rain because of this stupid Move.

 

Is Concrete Genie worth it?

I can't recommend this game enough. I love it, or should I say the genies, too much. 

But there are some cons too.

I don't like the fighting against monsters towards the end, especially the big boss.

Hint: You can change the game's difficulty to easy. That's what I did.

Also way too often I'm having trouble seeing which designs the genies are requesting. That's so frustrating, for both the genies and the player. 

 

 

How long is Concrete Genie?

Concrete Genie is a relatively short game. My second playthrough took about 5 hours.

 

Cats in Concrete Genie

Yes, there are cats in this game. Or to be honest, I don't know if it's always the same cat. It probably is.

 

You can pet the cat, and the genies can pet the cat. So freaking adorable, both genies and the cat.

 

 

Is Concrete Genie free to play?

Concrete Genie is available for free on Playstation Plus Extra.

 

Concrete Genie gameplay (PS5)

Here's some of my Concrete Genie gameplay on Youtube:

 

Hidden Cats in New York: Review & gameplay (PS5)

Hidden Cats in New York is a sequel to Hidden Cats in London. They both are hidden object games, where you have to find cats. Lots of cats. And now, in real life New York just happens to be one of the few places I'd like to visit... So to put it mildly, I was very eagerly waiting for this game.

I previously wrote about the long struggle to find out the release date for Hidden Cats in New York's PS5/PS4 version.

 

 

And I was so anxious to play the game right when it comes out, but then to my horror I realized that the release would be at 2am my time.

 

I do go to bed late, but starting a new game at 2am would be too crazy even on my standards.

Then the game was actually released earlier than promised. I'm not sure when, but it was available before 1am my time. Just when I was about to go to bed... I should put that Gage gif here again...

And then, adding insult to injury, I noticed that I missed a giveaway for this game. Yes, in my current financial situation even that 2,95€ is too much.

But finally, like 12 hours after the game came out, I was finally able to play it. And was I disappointed? No.

Hidden Cats in New York has two difficulty levels: normal and advanced. The fun really only begins with advanced mode, only there you start unlocking hidden bonus levels. And only on advanced mode you can find special hidden cats.

 

There are a couple of things that make finding the cats easier.

First of all there are the sounds. The cats meow when you are near them. You can even adjust the sound settings, that you only hear the meowing.

Then there's the coloring of buildings/areas where all the cats have been found. There is no such feature in for example other series of similar hidden object cat games, A Building/Castle Full of Cats.

 

 

One warning though. On advanced mode at least for me towards the end of the level I had three uncolored buildings left, but the remaining cats were not in these buildings. I don't know if it's intentional or a bug. Hint: Special cats might appear only occasionally, and they could even be airborne...

And another tip: If you want to get the platinum trophy for this game, you can't use any hints on normal and advanced mode. On hidden bonus levels hints are allowed.

There are total of 757 cats to be found, so if you really love finding cats, this game is for you.

 

Here's a gameplay video of Hidden Cats in New York (PS5):

 

I wonder why the first game in this series - Hidden Cats in Paris - hasn't been published for PS4/PS5? 

There are many more Hidden Cats-games on PC, at least seven so far. I guess we'll just have to wait patiently to get more games of this series to consoles.

I Love Finding Cats: Review & gameplay (PS5)

I Love Finding Cats is one of the many hidden object games where the focus is on finding cats from different environments. In this game you get to search for cats in beautiful settings from around the world.

 

 

There are not that many cats to be found in I love finding cats. In fact you spend most of the time looking for items that are not cats. This was sort of disappointing.

But luckily there's some variety to the gameplay. Besides looking for cats  the game also has some jigsaw puzzles, all naturally featuring cute cats. The puzzles might seem a bit daunting at first, but when you get the hang of it they are actually quite simple. 

Although this puzzle with maneki-nekos did feel like a nightmare for some reason. Too many of them, I guess.

There's also a bonus feature to the game. When you find cats you get points, and with this "currency" you can adopt cats, suppposedly to accompany you during your travels.

 

 

Since English isn't my first language, some items were difficult to find for me because I simply didn't know what the names of the items meant. Normally my English skill is enough to play games in English, but not this time. For example I didn't know what is a garland or a toucan or a cupola or a hollyhock or a bunting.

For me the highlight of the game must have been this level, where something related to my favorite game was lurking...

 

From technical point of view, on PS5 the cursor moved way too fast for my liking. I found it easier to reduce its sensitivity. 

It is disappointing that this game does not have a platinum trophy. It is also said that some trophies might be buggy. And I still don't know how to get a golden star, which is required for a couple of trophies.

If you want to challenge your brain, then this game is for you. The puzzles become harder as the game progresses, so I love finding cats is not suitable for impatient people. Like me.

 

 

In summary: too few cats, too much other crap. Also in my opinion, the game's regular price is too high for this type of a game.

Even though I love cats I personally won't be playing any more games of this I love finding... series.

If you just want to find lots of cats, and not other things, then I suggest trying some other cat themed hidden object games, such as A Building Full of Cats, A Castle Full of Cats or Hidden Cats in London. 

 

Here's a short gameplay video of I Love Finding Cats! - Collector's Edition (PS5).

 

My time at Portia: Late gameplay tips

I get commissions for purchases made through the links in this post, at no cost to you.

 

As I told before I became heavely addicted to My time at Portia. Here are some stories from my playthrough, and some tips about what items are needed late in the game's main story.

The best days are when I find shit. A lot of animal feces. You can't buy, order or grow it, you have to find it yourself. And it takes a lot of crap to make fertilizer. And you need lot of fertilizer because you have to have crystal trees, even though crystal is needed in exactly one mission in the whole game. You also need nitre trees. Cotton. Rainbow flowers for pigments, you need a lot of them at one stage and even at the very end, a light 100 pcs. Giant plants for the autumn festival. 

You need wheat (!) for the horse. At one point I started to wonder why the horse's statistics showed a sad face and 100 percent hunger. I read horses like to eat mostly wheat and pumpkin. Well, the wheat didn't help, the hunger is still and always 100% (or maybe it's 100% full?). Fortunately, it doesn't matter, in Portia, for example, horses and children have not been developed. Children never grow up and you can never get rid of them, so it's not worth getting them.

 

How many ways has Portia tried to make me to stop playing it:


1. I was moving boxes from the yard inside and I put them in my inventory but the inventory was full. Normally, things that don't fit in your backpack fall to the ground and you can pick them up, even several days later. Now the boxes and the things they contained disappeared completely, they were nowhere to be found. In the end, I had to load an earlier save... or accept the loss of all the important stuff. I read online that this is how you get rid of things permanently in this game. So beware...

 

2. And then a new attempt at moving the boxes inside. When I had the box in my hands and came inside the house and my husband Gust happened to want to give me money right then, the box and the things in it disappeared forever. I tried to play the same morning many times, and always the same result. If the busband wants to give money, the box in my hands and its contents disappear. In the end, when moving the boxes, I had to make sure that Gust was not at home.

 

3. Then I was just working on my yard when I suddenly fell into the void. A terribly traumatizing experience. There were two options: to wait until the night, but to lose the (work) hours of the rest of the day. Or load up a save and play the day again. I chose the first option.

 

 

4. And then I went to the final boss unprepared and ran out of stamina and couldn't get any more of it. In earlier fights in the game, it hadn't mattered at all. No matter how long I kept watching the sidekicks, they didn't do any damage to the boss. So there was only one option, i.e. rage quit and the day was lost. When you know that in the first stage of the final boss you only need to reach 70% and the sidekicks can handle the rest of the stages completely by themselves... I almost reached that, but no. So don't go to the final boss unprepared like I did.

 

And then the many times when the PS5 claimed that "game access will expire in 15 minutes". Well, it didn't. Not even that one time when the game went dark and I thought that really was the end of it. Well, it was not. All this was because Portia was on Playstation plus extra.


And then I spent many days looking for a racket, because I knew I would need it in the future, and I sold all the old ones... I finally found a racket, but it was out of reach behind a floor/wall. This is a common problem in Portia's mines.

 

 

I always made sure that I had all the needed stuff ready in advance... But in the last mission of the main story (before the end credits) you have to build an airplane. Of course I had all the stuff ready and done. Except one. You need 45 pieces of carbon fiber for that mission and I think I only had 8. And you can only get carbon fiber in two ways, and both require fighting. I had already thought that after the last boss I would never have to fight again. I hate fighting.

Okay, so... you can either send the civil corps to the Ingalls mine to get that carbon fiber. But it is really expensive and requires that you first play through the levels required for the Ingalls mine. Another option is the Deepest ruin, and there if you get an S grade in the level, it is possible that there is carbon fiber in the prize box. Grade S requires you to get through the level in less than a minute. I can't really do that. But luckily you can buy drugs in the Deepest ruin. When you buy a cola, you get an S grade even if it takes more than two minutes. I really wouldn't have wanted stressful fights right then... but who could wait for a better time?

So, just when I was desperately trying to save money for Syphilis (Phyllis), too much money was spent on carbon fiber. Syphilis is an expensive woman, but because of the trophies, she is mandatory. I wouldn't have wanted to give up Gust, but fortunately you can... save the game, and then re-load. In other words, the second divorce was just a bad dream. When I finally made Syphilis' dream come true, I gave her a gift... thank you and goodbye without saving.

Is it a sign of addiction if I keep playing the game even after getting the platinum? But I had to, because the main story missions continue even after that. With the money I saved from Syphilis, I bought a barn where I could finally place the cows that had been waiting in the storage box for a very long time. And I bought some lambs too. They are so cute I can't stand it (and they produce that precious shit!).

 

 

As the main story was threateningly coming to an end, the lack of things to do started to feel bad, so it was time to have a child. During pregnancy, health and stamina are 30% lower than normal, so it's not really worth it if there are going to be fights.

 

 

 

What is a suitable name for Diarrhea's child? At least Poop.

 

 

If the child is left unfed and uncared for, the only consequence is that the relationship with the child suffers. That is, social workers do not take the child away like in the Sims.

 

The main story of the game ends with building of a ship and the epic I'm on a boat moment. It's nice that after many years, my husband thinks this way about me. ("Well, thanks for all your hard work over the years. I suppose I could say... in some regard... I have a lot of respect for you.")

My time at Portia gameplay videos:

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1

2

3 (ending and end credits)

4

 

 

I have started to play Portia's sequel My time at Sandrock, and made a first blog post about that game's Macchiato the cat. But more posts of Sandrock will follow...

Review: My time at Portia (PS5)

In the game My time at Portia in the beginning you move to a village, and of course you inherit some land and a workshop with the purpose of doing something, and of course you should make friends with the villagers and marry one of them. So it's a very simple game? No it is NOT.


I never would have believed...


*that I would get totally addicted to this game

*for the game to be so complicated, you have to do many things at the same time

*that it has so many cute animals (for example, those colorful llamas jump around happily and you have to murder them in cold blood)

*that it would be so stressful, my neck and head etc. hurt badly while playing and at worst my hand went numb. In the end, I had to stop (for a day. I took a day off and it was difficult, because of my addiction). Should I play something more relaxing, like RE4 Remake? lol (I guess there is no such thing as easy enough game for me when even Spirit of The North also caused me to rage quit)

 

My time at Portia doesn't hold the player's hand, and it doesn't suit me. When you once again have to look on the internet how to get a new necessary ingredient when the game doesn't tell you about it in any way... without the instructions on the internet, I couldn't have played this game.

 

 

The best thing about the game is of course that you can get a cat! Pinky is a pink and fat cat that I bribed with fish every day for over a month before she finally agreed to be mine.

 

 

 

Building social relationships in the game is painfully slow, even if you gift people with their favorite stuff every damn day.

 

 

The worst moment was when I had two time-limited tasks that required things I didn't have yet. Being an idiot, I took the Commerce Guild task to make 5 sprinklers. They require valves, which the internet claimed to be found in Abandoned mine #2, where I dug in vain for a week (!). In the end I went to the sewage plant, the end boss of the first level always drops 2 valves. I had to go there on four different days, because the first time I got to the boss, I ran out of stamina. It was stressful to have to kill the boss many times when just beating him wasn't enough, you also have to dodge. And I don't normally bother to dodge in games...

And at the same time there was another task, that required stuff which I finally finished one night. I knew that when I woke up in the morning, I have less than 2 hours to find the guy to whom I have to return the stuff. On the first attempt, the guy did not agree to accept the goods and the mission failed. I loaded the day and realized that I had the wrong kind of glass with me the first time. In the end it worked, but it was close. I worked so hard and for so long on those missions that it would have been a bit of a bummer if the time had run out, and damn close it was.

 

There are many bachelors in the game to choose who to marry, but only  for two of them you get trophies. One woman and one man. It's interesting to think about who I would have chosen if trophy hadn't "forced" me to marry Gust. At least not him, that's for sure. In order to get together with Gust, I gifted him daily with bloody umbrellas, they require the spikes of certain animals to make them. Have Portians never heard of vegan umbrellas?!

 

I had to wait a long time for the proposal. When I thought it would finally happen, I still had to take care of the future groom's pig for six days.

 

There would have been really funny answer options when refusing the proposal.

 

Then the wonderful day came and I finally got married!!1 For some reason, the groom's doppelganger was a guest at the wedding.

 

It was a bit sad when at the end of the month/year the situation was that I lost to Higgins only by a small margin.

 

 

LUCKILY I realized that I can reload that last day of the year again. I had messed up and didn't notice that there were tasks available on the wall even though it was the weekend. So I played the day again, and the victory and the trophy were mine!

 

 

(and as a bonus I got [unsaved of course] the divorce trophy, although it was hard to get enough money for the divorce when the merchants started saying they couldn't afford to buy more of my stuff. but it was nice to find out the next morning that the divorce was just a bad dream lol [Gust even dared to say that he knew this wouldn't last])

 

 

It was good to stop playing the game with that win and trophy. I had already decided that I would quit after a certain story mission, which I worked hard for in advance, so that Higgins wouldn't have time to steal any commissions. I have had enough of this health-destroying stressful game!

 

According to reviews My Time at Portia is a relaxing game? WTF? I so disagree with those reviews: How can you rest up your brain when you constantly have to think about how to get this, this and that? When to get that one thing you have to get and make many others? What the hell is this shit about a slowpace game? All the time you are terribly busy, especially when a large part of the missions have a time limit. Surely a stressed soul can't rest, it just gets more stressed!! Ugh, and by the way, it's a shame to know that it's a Chinese game.

 

 

Next, I started playing the original Resident Evil 4 (a poor person can't afford the remake), with chicago typewriter. Killing Spaniards was a much more relaxing activity than playing Portia... until I died of novistadors. I hate them so much.