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Beating Games

Issun

(He/Him)
Emio: The Smiling Man - Famicom Detective Club was an enjoyable murder mystery, even if the gameplay mostly boils down to "keep selecting the options until someone tells you something new". The characters are good, and it has a lot more heart than you'd expect from a game about a serial killer what wears a creepy paper bag on his head.
 

lincolnic

can stop, will stop
(he/him)
Picked up Blasphemous 2 last week in the current PSN sale and had a good enough time playing it. I'd say my biggest gripe is that a couple of bosses are randomly very overtuned, but nothing took more than a handful of attempts. Solid Metroidvania with a totally reasonable amount of gameplay (~20 hours, I used a guide to get the final two collectibles I'd missed along the way). I do wish the plot was a bit less inscrutable, but that's how the first game was too. I wonder if any of that stems from translation issues.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Star Wars Outlaws is a pretty boilerplate Ubisoft open world game, but it has one of the better stories in the franchise of the Disney era.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Clock Tower Rewind is an all-timer of the genre presented in a kind of wonky package. The cartoonish new promotional art used in the opening animation sits aesthetically at odds with the game's appeals to photo-referenced mundane realism, and the same can be said for the opening and credits themes that utilize vocals, by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Emi Evans respectively--reliable professionals, but whose utilization in this context is odd, and particularly in McGlynn's case just evokes Silent Hill which she's inextricably associated with. A related issue turns up in trophy names too, at least two of which quote Resident Evil, which is something I'd rather avoid for how tired a nod it is, and how needless for something that's perfectly capable of standing on its own as its own work.

The fun stuff here are the bonus materials, like a newly recorded interview with game director Hifumi Kono, or packaging scans and voice-acted motion comics... the game's own presentation falls short in multiple ways. From what it appears the game uses the Deluxe romhack as a base for integrating content from the PS1 port into the SFC original (running on stairs, new scares, new Scissorman behaviour), but the fidelity doesn't carry on through as the game uses Limited Run Games's Carbon Engine emulator, which is notoriously spotty across their releases, as it is here: slowdown is introduced to multiple scenes and the audio crackles and pops constantly like you're running an outdated release of Snes9x. The display options don't really leave one satisfied, either: the CRT filter (no further options) is thoroughly unattractive (speaking as someone who prefers to use one most of the time with vintage material) and there are only variations on a 8:7 SFC-internal aspect ratio and no 4:3 options to speak of.

For something that titles itself "rewind", that selfsame feature that's by now a standard of modern old game releases is oddly restrictive and only allows rewinding a handful of seconds, which is in almost all cases where you'd want to use it insufficient, as all animations, player movement and even the bursts of action in Clock Tower are very slow--if avoiding a Scissorman encounter is the baseline for what you'd use rewind for, then practically you're never afforded enough time to backtrack far enough to escape the outcome. Offering one single save slot and requiring to exit out of the game to restart for a load is also a curious decision for something that's built around a large number of endings to replay for and the many explorational branches that determine the conclusions.

It's still Clock Tower, but considering Human Entertainment are long gone and as the boot-up sequence throws a host of companies involved in leveraging its properties (Sunsoft, Capcom, Wayforward, Limited Run), it's a slightly nonplussed feeling as far as "supporting the creator" sentiment goes.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Beat The Messenger. I enjoyed the main game well enough (I got a bit addicted to it, for a bit), but I wished it had taken itself at least a little bit serious. Granted, it did so at the very end, but elsewise, the story is just a bunch of self-conscious references. It just robs these moments, that could have been great, of any power. Coming back to the start, as the hero from the west, could have been really cool, if it meant anything, beside you just being the hero who saves the next generation, doing exactly what the one before you did. There is no sense to the world itself. It's just this gauntlet of difficult-to-traverse terrain. Then you become one of the blue-robed dudes, but it also ends in a joke. Dunno, I feel like they left a lot of interesting ideas on the floor, just to make jokes. And I get it, many fans of the game love the writing. I just wished there was some sense of the story taking itself serious.

I also tried the postgame, and I'll give up for now. Every time the game demands me to use that cloudstep technique over bottomless pits, with moving objects to hit, I feel like the game demands too much of me. I don't feel myself getting better, just that I get lucky after some time. I also kinda mix up the double jump and the floating.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I finished the campaign for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. For the first time in years, it feels like they put real effort into making it a unique and memorable experience.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Still Wakes the Deep is really good. It's a horror game set on a Scottish oil rig in the 70s. There's some stealth where you have to hide from monsters but it's not too difficult.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
I beat The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom this evening. Fantastic game. It did an amazing job of feeling like a Zelda game but also being unique with having you actually play as Zelda. It was just enough its own thing. I loved it.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Crow Country is a retro-styled survival horror game set in a theme park with some dark secrets. Not really scary but clever and fun for a few hours.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a mysterious puzzle game where you use deduction and logic to explore a strange hotel and slowly unravel the story. Really damn good.
 
I finished Silent Hill 2 (2024). I think it will be my game of the year.

At least for me, 2024 has been full of great games: Castlevania Dominus Collection, Disaster Report 4, FFVII Rebirth, Vampire Survivors and now Silent Hill 2 (2024).
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
The Operator is a narrative-focused investigation-puzzle-game-thing where you play "the guy in the chair", helping solve crimes. I wish it went deeper on its mechanics but it's neat.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
It took a year and a half but I finally "Beat" FTL. I acquired every ship and accomplished every ship achievement. The only two achievements overall I didn't get were "win on normal" (I never left easy. Game was hard enough as it is for me) and "kill a bunch of people with one drone" (I never liked the offensive infiltrator drones.) But I'm finally ready to move on!
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
The Rise of the Golden Idol does a good job of bringing the story and gameplay of the original game into the 1970s setting. It's also quite a bit longer, in my experience.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Thank Goodness You're Here is a charming, crudely funny little game where you solve simple puzzles in a small English town.
 

Exposition Owl

dreaming of a city
(he/him/his)
I remember that several years ago in a year-end roundup I named Control as the most Lynchian game I'd played that year. Alan Wake 2 out-Lynches it by a country mile. That's probably the closest we're ever going to get to Twin Peaks: The Video Game. Anyhow, the sequel is an improvement over the original Alan Wake in every way, and the addition of the Federal Bureau of Control to the setting makes for some fun additional wrinkles. I can't wait to see where Remedy is going to go with Control 2.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I finished Astro Bot, which is the best 3D platformer I've played in years. Not that I play very many.
I am seeing this on SO MANY year-end lists but I'd somehow ignored it until now. I think I misinterpreted it as an educational kids game somehow. Going on the wishlist based on all the love I'm seeing for it.

Edit: Oh it's PS5 only. Well that's why I've ignored it then ha. If it comes to other platforms someday I'll check it out.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I doubt you'll see this on other platforms any time soon - the game is very dependent on the Dual Sense controller, and it's full of Playstation branding and nostalgia.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Anyhow, the sequel is an improvement over the original Alan Wake in every way, and the addition of the Federal Bureau of Control to the setting makes for some fun additional wrinkles. I can't wait to see where Remedy is going to go with Control 2.
I've heard this sentiment before too, and I'm wondering does that mean I should skip Alan Wake 1 and go directly to 2? Or is it still more important to play them in order? (I've owned the 1st game since... a long time ago, and never played it)
 

Exposition Owl

dreaming of a city
(he/him/his)
I've heard this sentiment before too, and I'm wondering does that mean I should skip Alan Wake 1 and go directly to 2? Or is it still more important to play them in order? (I've owned the 1st game since... a long time ago, and never played it)

The original game is fun, so I'm sure you'd enjoy it if you decided to play it first. If you decide to go straight to the sequel, though, I wouldn't blame you--we've all got backlogs we'll never get through. Still, if you do skip the first game, I'd suggest reading a good recap of it before diving into 2. It's really narrative-heavy, and you'll get more out of the places the plot goes if you know things like who Scratch is and what the Clicker does.
 

Exposition Owl

dreaming of a city
(he/him/his)
I’ll certainly grant that it has *more* action, though I don’t think the action in either game feels as good as Control’s.
 
Cosmic Fantasy.

I bought the Cosmic Fantasy collection on sale and beat the first game. I have a lot of nostalgia for Valis, and these games come from the same publisher Telenet and have a similar aesthetic. This first game has neat animated cut scenes that must have been amazing for the time. The character designs are great. The late 80's was the sweet spot of anime for my taste.

The plot is basic but good enough to produce entertaining cut-scenes.

The world map unfolds in a very linear way. There is basically no exploration.

The combat is super basic and unbalanced. There are times when random hoards are more difficult than the bosses. You will often execute the same set of actions for every single battle in a dungeon. There are long stretches where your main character does so little damage, that the optimal strategy is for him to block - to at least minimize the amount of healing you have to do after the fight. Your magic user does all the damage.

The game is generous with money (too generous) and save points (thank God).

I had to refer to the manual to decipher the spell names, which are coded as "Ranat", "Vikar", etc. kind of like Phantasy Star. The game luckily makes it easy to open up the manual mid-game.

There is a brutal translation error that reverses the names of the attacker and attack-ee in the combat text. Unpatched.

Overall, I still had fun despite the raw-ness of the game and look forward to playing Cosmic Fantasy 2 sometime soon.
 

Exposition Owl

dreaming of a city
(he/him/his)
Just finished Dungeons of Hinterberg, which is a delightful combination of things not quite like anything I've played before. The premise is that you play as Luisa Dorfer, a Viennese tourist vacationing in the town of Hinterberg in the Austrian Alps, which is devoted to the new sport of exploring the magical dungeons that have mysteriously appeared in a few places around the world. The game is divided into days, each of which has a morning, noon, evening, and night. In the morning you plan out your day while having breakfast at the hotel, and maybe have some plot-relevant conversations. In the main part of the day the game is sort of like a 3-D Zelda, in which you explore one of the wilderness areas near town, fight monsters, solve puzzles using the spells unique to that area, and maybe enter a dungeon. If you don't feel like dungeoneering, each area also has a number of scenic spots where you can have Luisa just chill for the day and enjoy the beautiful Alpine landscapes (and boost stats by doing so). In the evening you come back to town, where you can hang out and build friendships with one of a dozen or so people, some of whom are other tourists and some of whom are locals, and each of whom has a unique, sensitively-written personal take on what it's like to be in Hinterberg. As your friendships with these characters deepen, each one will start to give you bonuses for when you're out doing dungeons. Again, though, if you're not feeling social, you can relax by yourself at a spa or the movies. Finally, when you get back to your room at night you have the choice of virtuously going to bed early, or staying up reading a book or watching TV, each of which has its own benefits.

I really can't say enough about the writing and characterization of this game. It offers some really thougthful takes on what it's like to be on a really good vacation and the sense of distance that can give you from your everyday life, but also on the effects that heavy tourism has on local lives and economies. Maybe most importantly, I don't think I've ever played a game that deals this well with the process of making new friends. The key here is the element of choice the game gives you around whom you spend time with, and how much time you spend with them. It emerges naturally from the gameplay loop that you'll build the deepest relationships with the characters that you the player like best, make a somewhat wider circle of casual friends, and probably have a few others whom you don't really get along with. This one officially gets the Seal of Owl-proval.

(Incidentally, @FelixSH , if this is available on one of the platforms you own, I'd be really interested in your take on it as an Austrian. I haven't been to the Alps myself, but the game was developed by an Austrian team, and it seemed to me like they put a lot of local knowledge into it.)
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Oh yeah that was fun. It was on Gamepass a month or so ago, not sure if it's still there. I didn't get too far but no particular reason, just short on time and picked other things to play instead.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Finished Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Fun story, but my favorite part was just exploring the different areas and solving puzzles, finding secrets, and knocking out Nazis.
 
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