
Catching up on a few more. I'm trying out Backloggd as a repository of my reviews, so if anybody is interested, check that out.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Rolled credits on Uncharted 2. Played on PS5 as part of Nathan Drake Collection, maybe 8 hours (ps5 doesn’t track hours played for specifically this one, inside the collection). No way I’m getting platinum on this, since it requires completing the game on the highest difficulty. I played through on Easy and already found parts of that incredibly frustrating. I know this was a remarkable game for 2009, and parts of it certainly still hold up, but a lot just doesn’t. I was lost frequently, hated combat so the absurd number of bullet sponge enemies you had to plow through was ridiculous, and the story and acting are good-for-the-era but hardly an all time high point in 2024.
Even though I played most on Easy, I still felt many of the enemies were extremely bullet spongy, and there were WAY too many. I could’ve cut them down by 80% and thought it’d be closer to reasonable. I think it’s an interesting difference from what most modern cinematic games offer as the easiest option: a story mode difficulty, where combat can be largely ignored. This Easy mode was nowhere near that, and honestly would be too challenging for a lot of gamers to be able to complete.
Still, the game is a big step up over Uncharted 1. It plays better, animations and graphics are improved, acting is better, there’s a decent story, there are some truly incredible set piece moments, and the environments are well created and immersive. But… whew. I just kinda hated a lot of my time actually playing it. I got lost almost constantly. Very frequently, the game had a cool cinematic moment it needed to happen, so I couldn’t go my own way and instead needed to get it to whatever trigger it was waiting for. Oh also, Drake decided to just yeet himself off a cliff because I apparently wasn’t quite pushing the right direction, or was trying to jump on something I wasn’t supposed to.
Uncharted 2 is good, maybe 7/10 for me. But games since have so vastly improved that anybody saying it’s still a modern masterpiece 10/10 is looking with rose tinted glasses (in my opinion).
Jusant
Wrapped 100% on Jusant. Played ~6 hours on Xbox Series X via Game Pass, including all achievements. This is a meditative journey game of climbing a giant mountain (zero combat), discovering letters from the people who used to live there, and piecing together some of the story of this strange post apocalyptic world. It’s beautiful, expressive, and reflective of life’s small joys. The climbing mechanics are phenomenal and is the closest to real-climbing I’ve ever seen. There are a ton of beautiful areas to discover, that are quite off the main path, which made the world seem pretty real. However, figuring out what *is* the main path was pretty confusing a good chunk of the time, and I got lost several times. Also, the story and letters are mostly unsuccessful at drawing me in, and probably could have been cut. Still, I ended up enjoying this peaceful game quite a lot, and in some ways reminded me of Sable, which I also enjoyed more than most. Overall, it’s maybe 8/10 for me? If you have game pass, it’s worth playing an hour or so just to see the clever climbing mechanics.
Metroid Dread
Wrapped a normal mode 100% clear of Metroid Dread. Total played 12 hours, apparently died 52 times. I’m mixed on how I feel about the game. There’s a ton I absolutely loved: playing Samus again, the fast action, the tension, the mood, the detailed and varied environments, the incredible animation, and lots of fun collectibles and secrets. But there are a few parts I just haaaaaated. This has mild mechanical spoilers to the game, so I’ll spoiler text it just in case:
- The EMMI’s were great in theory, but I just didn’t enjoy any of their sections. Their rooms were obviously designed with many possible routes you could take to get away and escape, but it made them feel like arenas instead of a real space station. When you could finally defeat them, it felt more like a fiddly chore to me than a fun accomplishment. In particular, I absolutely despised the instant death mechanic (yea there was the slim chance of parrying them, but it was a pita) and just felt frustrated most of the time.
- Speaking of parrying, I’m not a fan of parries in games at all, and *hate* mandatory parry mechanics. This had *multiple required* parry setups in order to progress, and several boss fights were an absolute slog unless you did the *technically optional* parry setups. They made amazing cinematic moments, but I just hate them.
- The game too obviously railroaded you towards the next objective. I didn’t feel like I could actually explore at all, since I’d constantly be hitting road blocks. “Oh, yet again, all options of where to go are conveniently temporarily blocked except the one path. Great.” I felt constrained and frustrated, and couldn’t do the classic Metroid thing of running around and exploring to find more power ups to make progressing easier.
- In general, they overtuned the whole game for Normal difficulty. Tons of monsters and bosses had way too much HP until you were finally OP by the end, and basically required you to master the parry mechanics to keep progressing. Oh and they respawned incessantly. Also, they scaled up boss damage so high that it felt like getting extra energy tanks was mandatory to even survive one or two hits. Didn’t feel more powerful and instead just felt like I was barely at the minimum level to even try it.
- Mopping up at the end was quite satisfying, except there were several secrets not telegraphed at all. Like no hint whatsoever that I could see, so I had to look up maps online to find the remaining items for 100%. Also some of the shinespark puzzles were excessively tightly tuned, making them very difficult to execute even when you knew the solution.
A couple actual spoiler parts I thought were truly awesome though:
absorbing the last EMMI was such a hell yea moment, everything about Kraid (except too much of a slog), finally defeating Raven Beak (which would’ve been a perfect battle except for the *several mandatory parries*) and the cutscenes before, during, and after that fight were brilliant.
So, in the end, I think I’m an 8/10 on it. A mix of adored it and hated it. It’s still great though, and definitely worth a look.
So two of your main complaints, the party and the enemy HO/respawn... Those were so much worse in the Return of Samus remake by this same studio.
Like that game is a slog. You can't run from room to room to backtrack without stopping to parry 50 enemies. It's exhausting.
So Dread is much tuned down and parry much less required. It's actually refreshing after playing the other one.
I'm going to count D4 Vessel of Hatred as completed.
I've finished the campaign and hit level 60.
I don't get to finish a lot of games aside from the games that I do finish (I finish dozens of times)
This was a few days back but its just in time for MW5 Clans (today) and the Wow anniversary event 10-22
Just finished Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly.
It's basically a video novel where you run a coffee shop in Seattle, but in this Seattle (and the rest of the world) fantasy creatures like elves, trolls, vampires, werewolves, aliens, satyrs, and so on all exist and coexist alongside humans. This coffee shop has late-night hours that attracts a bunch of regulars who show up and discuss their problems and goings on while you fix each of them a tasty brew. All the regulars get to know you, each other, and they even have story arcs that unfold over several episodes/nights.
Honestly, it was enjoyable, but there's not really much to say about this title since it's more a passive viewing experience than an actual game, but there are some elements where you interact. When the regulars have a beverage request - sometimes it's a straightforward order, sometimes a vague suggestion - it's then time to concoct your coffee creation (it's literally you selecting 3 ingredients and hitting the "brew" button to make their caffeinated combination).
One interesting aspect of the title is that the more often you successfully match the drink request to the customer's request, the more likely they will have the best possible outcome in their story arc. There is also an overarching story in the game, but overall nothing too crazy or stressful here.
And that's exactly what I was looking for with this. Coffee Talk 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly is exactly what you'd expect - a relaxing pause, a mental coffee break from the stresses of modern day life. The title doesn't demand you to push back a Tyrranid swarm or save Azeroth from destruction. It just asks you to slap together a latte for the blue haired banshee so she can enjoy a relaxing treat while she complains about her opera auditions. I found this title (I'm intentionally avoiding the term "game" here) was best played by just going through an episode every now and then, but always at night.
Up next, I have to admit, Disco Elysium is...unconventional. Weird, but intriguing. I don't know what to make of it yet since it's so early, but I'm intrigued by its uniqueness. HELLDIVERS 2 and Space Marine 2 are there when I need an adrenaline/testosterone cocktail, multiple Baldur's Gate 3 adventures await (this game will probably never leave the hard drive), and WoW is WoW.
E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy done. Even 15 hours.
I am glad I finally played this game to the end (kind of) and really regret not doing it a long time ago.
I went in pretty much blind, then after a couple hours checked out some reviews/opinions and realized the thing is equal parts awesome and weird. You can tell this was not made by your typical dev team, and of course, they are French. Explains the occasional perplexing dialogue: aside from lots of the story and talk being intentionally confusing and obtuse, the translation is obviously not the best - but it is firmly in the "bad in a way that it's good" territory. Keep an eye out for quips like: "The only accident I fear will be your head falling in a vat of acid with me wearing your effing moron face as a party mask." Talk about trash talk... I don't care what you think, it's absolutely hilarious!
Now, I only "kind of" finished it because it is pretty much expected you'll do multiple playthroughs to get the most out of this game, but I am satisfied to do the first pass and call it done (for now at least). It is almost guaranteed that I will get back to it as I am at mere level 19 after the first 15 hour run. The level cap is absolutely insane 120... I can only try to imagine what brutal OP powers and skills are available down the line.
Basically, it is a full blown RPG disguised as a FPS shooter.
By the sheer luck of my dialog choices, it seems that I found the most powerful "spell" in the game: Triangular Gate. It can one-shot pretty much every enemy you can get close enough to, except Deus Ex's on Mars (I guess those take two shots, but are hard to approach, because they can one-shot you from a distance).
Anyway, this game is a hearty recommendation if you are willing to ride out the difficulty spikes and somewhat clunky mechanics (almost 14-years old, after all). Keep repeating to yourself: "Death don't matter" - you keep equipment, experience and Brozouf, no matter what. Just ride out the first couple hours, until things start to click in.
EYE DC is weird, silly, hard and occasionally, super-awesome. Great replay value, and apparently the multiplay still works (up to 32 people can play through the game together)
And it's pretty cheap on Steam.
I finished Assassin's Creed Mirage! got the Platinum trophy, did all the optional contract missions, upgraded all the gear, etc.
Long story short, I had a blast with this one. When I initially fired it up a year ago, I was still nursing burnout from Assassin's Creed Valhalla, so I didn't get far. While I played and completed the last three massive RPGs in the series, I'll be the first to say they're way too big, they've lost the focus on stealth and assassinations, and the urban playground of earlier entries is something I vastly prefer over wide open spaces and comparatively small cities.
Mirage goes back to the classic style of gameplay we haven't seen since Evie and Jacob's adventures in AC Syndicate. There are no RPG mechanics (though there is a perfunctory skill tree to unlock upgrades), assassinations are instantaneous, and Baghdad is a dense, crowded playground with plenty of rooftops and verticality to grapple with. The stealth gameplay has been really polished compared to some of the older games: there are tailing and eavesdropping objectives, but they're designed in a way where it's always clear(ish) where you need to go, and are overall not frustrating. Most of the game's encounters are designed so you can approach them in a variety of ways, with a sort of open-ended puzzle feeling that was satisfying to figure out without being too frustrating.
This game was originally conceived as an expansion to Valhalla, and in some ways it shows (even the price is lower than a full priced AC game!). The story is pretty thin, and the ending only makes sense if you've finished Valhalla. Outside of the very opening and ending hours, I'd say it's a fairly plot-light game. Once you get into Baghdad, you can approach your objectives in whatever order you want, and the story merely provides an excuse for you to wander the city and take out a bunch of targets. There aren't very many memorable characters, including the primary protagonist. The only meaningful side content consists of a couple dozen optional contract missions. They often have you revisit areas you've already been, give you some optional objectives to incentivize not just rushing in, and again provide some fun puzzly stealth encounters to noodle your way through.
Like Valhalla, you do have to put some work into uncovering points of interest on the map. I didn't mind, because the environments in this game are stunningly beautiful. The amount of detail in the city, dwellings, exteriors and interiors, is insane. My hours played were inflated because I'd often just wander around the streets looking at the architecture and watching what people were doing. While the characters weren't memorable, many of the locations were. Several of the open world collectables unlock historical codex entries that tell you about 9th century Bagdad and the Abassid Empire, and I read nearly every entry. The historical tourism aspect of this series continues to be one of the strongest draws for me.
If you've been wanting a return to classic Assassin's Creed gameplay, along with a massively reduced time commitment compared to the last several games, playing Mirage is a no brainer. My final time was around 37 hours played. You can finish in significantly less time than that if you're not a slow poke like me.
assassinations are instantaneous
Valhalla is definitely a slog, but at least it has an option for guaranteed assassinations. There's also a mod for Odyssey that adds guaranteed assassinations. I don't know about Origins, though.
I tried Mirage, and while I wasn't burned out from a recent Assassin's Creed game, I didn't get very far. I think I've just had enough of that style of game. Glad to read that Ubi appears to be addressing some of the issues, though. Still, may be too little too late. As bad as things are at Ubi right now, the future of the franchise looks tenuous.
Sure there’s the option, but it’s not the default and the game wasn’t necessarily designed around it.
Regarding options and defaults, one thing I forgot to note: turning off as much UI as you can stomach really lets the world shine through. Again, I loved seeing the environments, so I ended up turning off the compass, objective list, and other parts of the UI. It really makes for an immersive experience.
I finished Heaven's Vault this weekend. Really enjoyable, but opaque enough to require a second playthrough. I'm going to bookmark the game for a return, but with my current backlog I may never get round to it.
My gaming is in an interesting place at the moment. Following on from Hakuoki Kyoto Winds and The Wolf Among Us, this is the longest I've gone without playing a shooty-stabby game. It's been a refreshing change, and one I'll probably keep going for a while.
I think I'll move on to Hakuoki Edo Blossoms next on PS Vita, and maybe This War of Mine or 13 Sentinels.
Nodebuster
Nothing else will give you this much fun for under $5. And it wasn't even on sale.
100%-ed it in 6 hours.
It's an "upgrades game". Shoot stuff to collect resources to buy upgrades to live longer and kill harder. Nodebuster, in particular, is extremely addictive.
Gameplay is super simple; you aim your square reticle at squares and other geometric shapes that float into view. It auto-fires. When you destroy something, it leaves resources behind and you vacuum them up by getting close enough with the center dot on the reticle. You lose health by being hurt by things you hit, when you hit them. Different shapes do different amounts of damage to you.
No clicking during action, unless you want to Terminate the round.
Highly recommended.
Frostpunk 2 is done for now. I'll probably check out the future expansions after they're all completed.
The first game is one of my favorites in recent years. I've replayed each scenario multiple times. The sequel is good, but doesn't reach the same height for me. I miss the small population, more intimate feeling of Frostpunk, where you might have, say, 5 citizens who are homeless because you screwed up and ran out of wood before you made all the tents you needed. You can see them lying down on the dirt in front of the generator, cold and hungry. Then they get sick and you feel guilty. And stressed out because the medical posts are overcrowding.
In Frostpunk 2, you have a more nebulous housing shortfall stat that just generates cold for your population if it goes below a certain threshold. Some level of homelessness is even baked in and doesn't cause any negative consequences at all. I guess it's kind of accurate. There's a lot more emphasis on wrangling together different factions to work together as well. The feel they're going for is larger, more long term. You're running a decent size city compared to the first one where you're more like captain of a ship.
Also finished in recent weeks: the System Shock remake and Cyberpunk 2077 which I played with the action and RPG clubs. System Shock is a must for any immersive sim fan. Cyberpunk was quite good, but I'd place it below Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3 among recent RPG's I've played. I'd probably rank it slightly below Witcher 3 as well.
I rolled credits on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. It was a good ride all the way. Only 1 bullet sponge enemy, but they were covered in armor. I really enjoyed the epilogue, too.
I rolled credits on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. It was a good ride all the way. Only 1 bullet sponge enemy, but they were covered in armor. I really enjoyed the epilogue, too.
Nice!
Batman Arkham Shadow: Wow.
What a great game and very emotional ending to this one. Really hope this same team makes a sequel.
Arkham Shadow plays like Arkham Asylum but in VR. Got the flow combat which are done via these dynamic quicktime attacks, which work surprisingly well. Then have the predator rooms where you have use stealth to take out guards.
The first 15-20% of the game is spent going through Gotham City and serves as a training area. You then switch to Black Gate Prison where you'll be for the rest of the game. You play a dual role. During the day you're "Matches" Malone, a criminal who's locked up there. At night you're Batman working you way further into the prison areas that are locked off.
You'll slowly unlock more abilities as the game goes on and there's several trees you can level up. Plenty of collectables and puzzles to solve - two math puzzles I just couldn't figure out at all.
You'll meet a familiar cast of characters - Jim Gordon, Jonathan Crane, Oracle, Harvey Dent, Harleen Quinzell. As well as a bunch of other familiar characters that will be part of audio tapes, or memories you can collect.
But the main objective is to find out who "The Rat King" is and stop his Day of Wrath, for which there's a countdown for. It all comes to a pretty emotional head and a very emotional ending. It's one thing to see it on a monitor but quite another to be right there face-to-face when these moments are happening.
Graphics for this look pretty great for a Quest 3 game. They did an amazing job with the lighting/shadows in many areas. It's still not PCVR level but better looking than 90% of the Quest games. I also improved things by using Quest Game Optimizer, where I was able to increase the resolution 31% and up the hertz from 72 to 90. It was a pretty nice upgrade with only a few areas where I hit some slowdown. But it also tears through battery power. After about an hour and change my external battery was down to about 30% and it was also draining my headset battery. Also needed to pop on my headset fan and set that pretty high to cool my head as it was generating a fair bit of heat - plus it's a workout while in combat.
I'll have to go back into the game and solve those few puzzles I missed and there were a few collectables I also need to find. Thankfully at the end it takes you back right before the "point of no return" so you can do that.
In any case this was one fantastic VR experience.
Finished off Dead Space on the weekend and it still remains one of my favourite horror/sci fi video games ever made.
A few weeks back I was playing Callisto Protocol, because it was October and I wanted a spooky game, and it was free on Playstation Plus. The whole time I was playing I kept complaining to myself: "This game is kinda terrible. Isn't it from one of the Dead Space folks? Why did they make their rip off of the stasis mechanic so terrible? That was the best part of Dead Space! Why is the combat so terrible? Dead Space's was so well ballanced! Why aren't I playing Dead Space instead of this crap?"
Then I remembered that they remade it AND it too was free on Playstation Plus.
Man oh man did I love the remake. I hadn't played the original since it came out in 2008, so I couldn't really tell you everything they changed in the new one. But there wasn't anything I could remember that wasn't included in this new version.
I loved how Isaac is just some average lookin' joe trying to do his job and not some ripped hella good looking hunk. I thought the voice acting was really well done and I'd forgotten that the original didn't have much voice acting at all. The sound design was just as amazing as it was in the first game; suspenseful and terrifying, without being cheesy (unlike Callisto Protocol). The gore was at just the right level of "WTF is going on here?!", again unlike Callisto Protocol that felt like it was designed by a 20 something edgelord circa 2005.
I never do a newgame+ runthough of a game when I've finished it, but I think I might do that with Dead Space. There were a few side quests and upgrade paths I missed and I kinda wanna finish them all.
Done with factorio space age. I stopped at the last planet and the last two sciences. Just a bit too much to be fun for me. It's definitely a dlc for the more hardcore player. Especially at the end. That said the first three planets and getting there was a fun challenge.
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
An initial point of order: I have heard a Sir Brante described as a "visual novel", and I think this does the game a disservice. To me, a visual novel is a game in which the narrative is on rails, and any decisions or gameplay entrusted to the player is mainly busy work that has little-to-no impact on where the story goes. Sir Brante is most definitely not that. I would describe it more as a "choose your own adventure" - or, in the words of its creator, a "narrative RPG". Decisions matter here. A lot.
We find ourselves here in a brutal low fantasy world that is falling apart - riven by escalating social and religious tensions (completely unlike the real world!). In this milieu, we play as the titular Sir Brante, guiding his life through childhood and into adulthood. Gameplay consists of a series of vignettes of important events and interactions in Brante's life, during which we make decisions about what to say and do. Choices will strengthen or weaken relationships. They do the same thing to our character's various "stats" (Valor, Theology, Eloquence, etc.). In turn, these changes unlock new and interesting choices, while opening certain narrative pathways and closing others.
Sir Brante is not unlike playing a combat-less D&D-type game with a skilled DM, and I found the whole thing enthralling. I did get to an ending after about seven hours, although it was not a good one: my character died at the end of the penultimate chapter after I had painted myself into a corner with decisions I had made. I didn’t really mind. One of the criticisms I’ve read about this game is people saying how difficult it is to get the "good" ending. I can only assume the people making these complaints are the same sort of folks who tried to minmax their way through Disco Elysium – in other words, they are missing the point. To me, the goal of Sir Brante is not necessarily to "win"; it is to be an active participant in an unfolding narrative. making hard choices and living with the consequences.
And, yes, many of those consequences are going to be bad. After all, suffering is quite literally the name of the game...
For the Halloween spookies, I started up Blair Witch on a whim, knowing full well that my prior experiences with Bloober Team games have been mixed. Their prior games consistently lost their intensity as soon as you realize that you are never (or very rarely) in any actual danger, being of the walking simulator, jump-scare variety of horror. That being said, I very much enjoyed Blair Witch, for several reasons.
For one thing, the story was interesting and told in a nice progression, answering some questions but leaving some to the imagination. You play a soldier with PTSD attempting to take part in a search for a lost child in the woods, and the insertion of this narrative in the context of the Blair Witch mythos is not as ham-fisted as it could have been. However, the usage of the Blair Witch license still seems unnecessary, as its presence seems to mimic the way that the town of Silent Hill creates horrors and monstrosities specifically based on the mental issues and past decisions of its victims. Maybe that was the goal for the Blair Witch developers, and while I understand it, I don’t think it really landed enough to generate buzz for a themed series.
To be clear though, what is here is executed pretty darn well. Your interactions with the dog Bullet are well done and he really feels like a living companion, not just a gameplay tool. He serves not only as a companion to control your PTSD while under stress, but also as a tool for exploration and item hunting, as well as tracking for enemies when you are directly under attack. And you can explicitly pet him so yeah, automatic purchase from me. (Side note, you do have a “Reprimand Bullet” command, for which I never found a purpose. I thought there would be moments when it would make sense to reprimand him for his own safety, but I never found a scenario like that. Maybe I just missed it, but your relationship with the dog plays into the ending you receive, so maybe it’s just a tool to go explicitly “dark-side” if you want. I have no idea and was loathe to test it.)
Anyway, if you are in the mood for a short and disturbing-but-not-too-scary horror game, give Blair Witch a shot.
I actually just played Blair Witch as well, after finally watching the original movie for the first time last month. I mostly agree with kstress, and it's neat seeing a lot of their Layers of Fear tech used in a completely different setting. The dog companion was done really well, though if you don't deal well with animal peril this game definitely isn't for you. In the back half of the game I felt like each gameplay segment started to feel too long. The climactic sequence in the house (similar to the movie), lasted about twice as long as it really needed to.
Still, I've generally enjoyed the Bloober games I've played, warts and all, so I was happy to finally get to this one as well.
The climactic sequence in the house (similar to the movie), lasted about twice as long as it really needed to.
No question, that last sequence was stupidly long, easily twice as long as any before it.
DEATHLOOP credits rolled. 48 hours.
The game is a masterpiece.
Aside from all other things I praised in my other posts about it, DEATHLOOP also has an absolutely amazing soundtrack. I watched the entire 10 minute (or so) credit roll, because the music is just that good. I'm eyeing that soundtrack price, just to support the Arcane Lyon team. Let's hope they fare better than Arcane Austin... After DEATHLOOP, I'll buy whatever next they make, sight unseen.
I love this game. I am now free to go get spoilers for secrets I was either just too lazy, or not smart enough to figure out.
I might even try to invade another player's timeline as Julianna...
Solid 9/10.
I started up Nodebuster and suddenly it was five hours later. A fun way to explore a skill tree.
Busting made me feel good.
DEATHLOOP credits rolled. 48 hours.
The game is a masterpiece.
Welp, you've convinced me to install it.
Wrapped my personal goals for Yakuza 0: completing the main story (at ~51 hours, on Easy) and completing all sub stories (~87 hours total). Played completely on Steam Deck, about 3/4 docked to my big screen (at 1080p) and 1/4 handheld. It looks and plays great both ways on Deck. My final completion list was ~84% and that’s as far as I want to bother.
This is a big one for me. It’s my first Yakuza/Like A Dragon game, and I’ve been tinkering away at it for a long time (bounced off it a few times over the last couple years!) then finally hunkered down to focus and complete it in the last couple months. I loved it, and kept choosing to play it over other big new releases that I thought I’d be more excited about (Plucky Squire, Echoes of Wisdom, Astrobot). It’s easily one of my favorites I’ve played this year.
The sense of place and commitment to the vibes are my favorite parts of the game. The feeling of living in and exploring Kamurocho and Sotenbori are incredible. There’s a ridiculous amount of detail everywhere, from city streets to restaurants to side activities. Further, the engaging story, excellent voice acting, shockingly good animations, witty and clever dialogue, genuinely funny humor, insane cutscenes, surprising emotional beats, poignant and vividly realized side stories, and absurd number of activities fills this out to be a huge unique experience. I’ve never played anything like this and I think I’m going to play through the entire series now.
While I found a little friction internally with the pace the game demanded I go (very intentional about every little step in dialogue, menus, going out to eat, or just completing your business work), I think it ends up demanding your attention in such a deliberate way that made me more present and engaged and appreciate my time spent with the game that much more.
I do have some pretty significant criticisms though: First, the overwhelming male gaze point of view and casual sexism pervades every part of the game. I get this is the late 80’s, this is the criminal world of Japan, and this is basically how it was for the seedy entertainment districts. But the way the game leans into this by enabling and heavily encouraging the player to engage and revel in this seediness makes me deeply uncomfortable. The cabaret club, the telephone dating, the cat fighting, and especially the softcore adult videos are unnecessarily expanded and detailed in such a way that feels like the developers are sending a painted-on message of “hey this is bad, you should definitely not be doing this” while also winking and nudging you down the path to oblige your dark urges. While I appreciate the overwhelming message the game repeatedly hammers home about sexual freedom (sexuality is normal and good, all kinds of kinks are okay, acceptance for homosexuality or even asexuality), I think it also perhaps unintentionally equates that acceptance with content that we’ve since grown beyond as a society.
Second, I never really cared for the battle system, hence playing through on Easy. Even then, I felt some later battles got tedious, and I didn’t enjoy a couple fighting styles at all. The upgrade and progression system for fighting felt poorly balanced and implemented as well. That said, I did think the variety and style of the fighting stances were incredibly well done, and I loved discovering more and more Heat actions even all the way to the end game, which frequently made me actually laugh at their absurdity.
Third, almost all of the optional side activities are very over-tuned. Every random person is a master at darts, pool, disco, bowling, etc, and there’s no way to overcome the randomness for several of those (like pool was terribly designed). It expected a near-perfect play to complete the sub story or completion list goals, which was a bit obnoxious when I had difficulty set to Easy and that doesn’t modify those sections at all. It’s a big part of why I’m not bothering going for 100% on the completion list.
Fourth, several of the activities required for completing sub stories were unnecessarily tedious or padded. In particular, the design for the telephone dating minigame success possibilities and the onerous hostess special training were some of the worst parts of the game. Small changes, like only allowing repeat telephone encounters after all others had been discovered or allowing special training without having to do a whole club opening in between would have made a huge difference.
Other minor gripes: equipped weapons and armor were largely useless until the very final challenges and the entire weapon exploration and crafting system was terrible, being unable to repeat chapters to pick up random missed achievements is obnoxious, the blocks-unlock for the final fighting style being so deep in a CP tree was rough, the design and goals of the hostess special training was bizarre and didn’t feel aligned with its goals at all, equipment benefits are ridiculously opaque, there were just waaaaay too many fights waiting for you on every street corner, and the final final challenges were obnoxiously tuned where you had to cheese them instead of using the battle skills you’d learned all game.
All that being said, I’m wobbling between a 10/10 or 9/10 for this game. I loved the rest of it that much. I really don’t think there’s anything else like this. It’s an excellent starting point for the series and still holds up beautifully, even ~10 years after release.
Crypt Custodian the spiritual successor to 2022's 2D Metroidvania 'Islets' but this time it's a top down 3D Metroidvania/Zelda like. All made by one dev Kyle Thompson with his brother Eric doing the music for the game. The results again are truly stellar.
You play a cat named Pluto who's somehow arrived at the afterlife. You then proceed to explore a huge map, meet companions, get a host of Metroidvania style upgrades as well as unlock new moves or passive abilities for your character along the way.
The game nails vibe, the ambient music playing a big part of that. This vibe is steeped in everything from enemy design, to those quiet moments going from place to place when there are little to no encounters. I'd even add the little sound effects when you get an ability point to spend or your smashing some black rocks with your broom to gather up currency.
The gameplay itself is really solid. Jumping from tile to tile in that top down view feels smooth, the dash is very tight & is incorporated into combat & platforming equally well. There is a crunch when you hit enemies that is instantly satisfying, the combat overall while somewhat basic is very good at the rhythm of dashing to hit an enemy a few times, moving out of the way of it's attack, jumping over projectiles & moving in again for the finish. Special moves + things like ground slam enhance this further.
The boss fights are where the real challenge lies. These are all so creative, with usually two phases in most encounters, the second phase ramping up the ferocity & speed of the attacks, bringing in new attacks etc. I'd say at it's toughest the game actually reminded me of Returnal, bullet hell style bosses where your movement, dashing & jumping need to be on point. It's deceptively tough in parts but you can always drop the difficulty down to easy if your struggling.
The map is huge & a lot of the new areas have unique mechanics that bring in some new wrinkle to what you've been doing throughout the game. Neon Crest has platforms that appear or disappear every time you dash, The Tower has blocks you can strike to move along a set track, other areas have bubbles that you can dash in & out of that can transport you longer distances. The design is rock solid.
The story is straightforward but very effective. You can collect 3 pictures for each polymorphic character you meet that tells you what happened to them when they were living. In a weird way it makes you think about your own life. These photos & descriptions really draw you into these loveable odd balls even more.
There are puzzles, timed challenges & a great chase scene further into the game to add to all the sweet Metroidvania sauce that's already there.
If you want some charming goodness in your life with well executed ideas, smart mechanics & some excellent boss fights then Crypt Custodian is the game for you. I'll be in on day one on any Kyle Thompson game going forward!
Finished Rogue Trader last night, Owlcat’s Warhammer 40,000 cRPG.
Overall I really enjoyed it - it nails the WH40K settings, it looked pretty damn good and the gameplay was - for the most part - fairly engaging. Owlcat’s preferred combat system of ‘buff/debuff, then hit’ worked much better in the turn based system this game uses compared to their previous RTwP system in their Pathfinder games.
But.
I have a difficult relationship with Owlcat and their take on what cRPGs should be. Generally speaking, you’re sitting down with a DM who’s refusing to let any story be told other than the one they want, and they follow the rules to the letter. It works much better here than it does for Pathfinder because those rules aren’t as rigid, but it’s still the same approach.
So while the the character building system in this game is nowhere as complex as Pathfinder, you still need to really sit down and think about what your are doing. The multitude of different systems - momentum, combat initiative, versatility, tactical advantage - there are loads of them, and your effectiveness in combat is going to be largely down to how you build those stacks of numbers and how you use them. It’s very complex and you really need to concentrate if you want to be able to use them all properly.
Or, like me, let someone on the internet tell you what a good build is.
The upshot of that was I mostly found the combat to laughably easy on normal, except where plot devices render you weaponless and debuffed into a literal hairbreadth from death. I can absolutely tel you that without those guides, I would have built characters about as useful as a chocolate teapot in a furnace and found the combat to be almost impossible.
I guess you are either to that heavy min/max style of character building or not - Owlcat aren’t going to change their ways there - but I could easily see throughout how much that would have annoyed me if I didn’t already know how important all that is.
The second is the plot and story telling. The game starts out really well. The prologue and the first two acts are terrific - really set the scene, you can really lean into what type of Rogue Trader you want to be; a Pompous aristocrat who burns the Xenos and Heretic alike, while having your Seneschal announce you to those beneath you? A unrepentant Crime Lord who has the biggest opportunity ever fall in their lap? A weary psyker who falls to the ruinous powers? You can do all of that, and the results are often quite well handled.
Where it starts to fall apart is as you get further into the 3rd act. Without spoilers, characters start to reveal who they really are or what they are really after, and let’s just say there are wild inconsistencies in their alleged motivations and what they actually do in the game. That get further exacerbated into the 4th as you move into what feels like the game’s ending, as Owlcat clearly lose track of all the choices and consequences you made and been impacted by. I had at least two NPCs get resurrected to be dealt with again, and another where the major plot occurrences of the previous mission were completely ignored and they referred back an individual ‘needing to be dealt with’, despite the fact they were with me while I was dealing with them the previous mission.
The 5th act was also entirely unnecessary, made the game largely outstay its welcome and quite honestly felt like something they were planning to be DLC and then changed their mind. Introducing an entirely new faction for three missions at the end of the game is certainly a bold choice.
I realise that makes me sound very critical of a game I actually think it pretty decent. It’s got every right to be held in the same regard as the likes of Pillars of Eterntiy for example. However, in this day and age you have to introduce the elephant in the room that is Baldur’s Gate 3. When you look at the simple but effective character build system Larian created out of the 5th Ed rulebook, and the fact they quite clearly mapped out pretty much every choice, decision and consequence you can make in the game, playing anything where that just hasn’t been done - especially the choice and consequence part - just feels lazy.
To be sure, I’m not entirely sure that’s entirely fair, but when one developer can do it, I’m not sure that there’s much of an excuse for another developer not to bother. Above all else the game as been out for nearly a year now, and nearly all of the more egregious errors haven’t been patched.
So yeah. A definite thumbs up, but I do think Owlcat have got to point now where their somewhat industrial approach to cRPG making needs to start seeing a lot more polish.
Every crpg review for the next five years at least will have the line 'well it's not baldurs gate 3 but...'
Which is sort of mad but fair
I finished the Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed DLC, after having played the main game a few years ago. It was a nice clean 20 hours, which seemed like a good length.
The main thing I noticed is how everything ties into character growth now – everyone levels up normally of course, but the way you unlock new stills and abilities and passives for your crew are something called affinity points, which are basically just earned by playing the game. Kill 5 of an enemy type? Get some points. Talk to a new person (thus adding them to the “community”)? Get some points. Do a quest for them and build the bond? Get points for the quest and then get more for upgrading the bond. Find a hidden area? Get points. Beat a Named Monster? You guessed it. There’s actually built in motivation now to go out and do the all things in this game.
And there’s cause to explore, since you can find relics that let you unlock a gem or accessory slot. So everything you do feeds back into the way your characters get stronger. And they’ve done away with the big job system of the main game entirely, and you unlock new attacks through the skill board, which I think streamlines things way down in a way that makes more sense. Honestly, this is a much better system than how busy everything in the main game was. I kind of wish this was used in the main game, or that this was longer and maybe a full game. But hey, maybe a lesson for next time?
It also seems like a good cap on the Xenoblade series storywise, although I had to look up some stuff on tvtropes to figure out some of the stuff I wasn’t catching in the final chapter of the game. Honestly, it makes me want to go back and plan Xenoblade 1 again, since it’s been a long while since I borrowed it from a friend from college to play it on the Wii.
I do have some pretty significant criticisms though: First, the overwhelming male gaze point of view and casual sexism pervades every part of the game.
I agree with you on nearly all points but have to take issue with the "male gaze" comment. The eye candy is on display for any gender or sexual preference, with every male combatant having the chiseled physique of a Greek god, routinely ripping off their shirts to do battle. It's over the top and silly in all cases.
Yes, some of the side stories and minigames are stupidly oversexualized but that's part of the gag and frankly, it's a Mature-rated game so I wouldn't be playing ANY Yakuza game in front of children anyway for the same reasons that I wouldn't watch an R-rated movie with sex scenes and gratuitous violence in front of them. I found those side quests tedious and boring, so I basically avoided them, largely turning off the completionist side of my brain so I didn't have to engage with them. Yakuza is a buffet, mixing "nutritional" items like great atmosphere, narrative, and combat with a bunch of "junk food" elements like oversexualized side stories and minigames. I don't take issue with the "junk food" elements because I don't consume them and everyone has that same choice.
Sasu wrote:I do have some pretty significant criticisms though: First, the overwhelming male gaze point of view and casual sexism pervades every part of the game.
I agree with you on nearly all points but have to take issue with the "male gaze" comment. The eye candy is on display for any gender or sexual preference, with every male combatant having the chiseled physique of a Greek god, routinely ripping off their shirts to do battle. It's over the top and silly in all cases.
I appreciate your thoughts and point of view, but I think it’s a lot more pervasive than you’re remembering, or perhaps you opted out of many of the worst sections. The outfits are only some of it, and didn’t particularly bother me. I think your main point is that it’s mostly equitable of its objectification of men and women and therefore reasonable.
Here are a few examples:
1. The primary reward after completing many of the quests and activities was a sexy video of the woman you were interacting with (which are FMV’s of actual adult performers in Japan). This is an extreme level of objectification of women, minimizing them to sexual objects to be won, and assumes the main goal for helping or interacting with any woman was to sexually ogle her.
2. The cat fighting minigame animations are *over the top ridiculous* levels of sexually charged. There’s nothing at all like that for men.
3. The entire hostess club and activities are about entertaining men, and only mildly wrestles with the idea of whether this is demeaning or morally grey for the women to do. You perform *hours* of “personal training” where you are teaching the women how to pander to men, and only somewhat identifies the women’s personal goals. Naturally, you get another sexy FMV for each of them when you complete their story (high fives!!!).
4. There are *constant* threats of sexual violence towards women in the storyline, most side quests, or when running around the streets. Men are threatened physically, but not with sexual violence (except once in the following still-not-equitable example).
5. The results from the telephone dating game basically summarizes as (a) you got a hottie congrats! (Oh and of course you got another unlocked sexy FMV!!), (b) you got scammed and ghosted darn!, or (c) oh no you got an ugly or old woman who sexually assaults you, bummer! You *literally lose health* from the encounter because it was so revolting. It screams dude-bro energy and minimizes any humanity to these women.
6. A few bonuses: (a) The telephone card collecting has no male parallel. (b) The main story plot has some pretty extreme moments that I won’t go into because spoilers. (c) Most relationships are portrayed as simplistic-minded women and strong but classically misguided males (there are some counter examples to this too, but even those are playing it for laughs).
I don’t have a problem with mature content (and I obviously don’t play them around my kids), and I’m pretty used to anime tropes and stereotypical Japanese points of view. My point is it went too far in total and it made me uncomfortable. I still love the game, but I think it’s good to be critical and voice those concerns, so perhaps future efforts could be more considerate.
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