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Beating Games

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Got the Bad Ending to Deaths Gambit, which, plotwise, also feels like a pretty appropriate ending for the game. It's easily my favorite Souls game (by merit of genuinely enjoying it) and among my favorite troid-em-ups in recent years (Dread is hard to top, but... good hustle).

Big love to this game about a ghost guy what's gotta un-immortal a cursed city
 
I finished Elden Ring (1st play through). The level of care and craft that From Software put into the game is impressive. I think the 10 / 10 review scores are warranted.

That said, I don't know if I will ever play another From Software RPG again. By the end of the game I really wanted it to be over. Elden Ring was way too long for me.

I miss the comparatively concise length of Demon's Souls. Demon's Souls remains my favorite From Software game.

I don't see From Software returning to that size game ever again. I think the success of Elden Ring means their next game will be as big or bigger.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Had a successful run of FTW, which shows promise but still feels pretty incomplete (incomplete enough that it hasn’t even hit Vers 1.0 on the Switch). It’s a Deck Building RPG that’s a mash-up of Slay the Spire and FTL, and those elements play together pretty nicely, even if there’s still a pretty light amount of content and half the cards you get are either absurdly overpowered or completely bugged (I’ve had entire runs where certain cards literally do not do anything, and others where I’ve drawn the same one copy of a card in my deck in consequent turns.)

Visually it’s very nice looking, and, as I said, mashing StS and FTL is pretty clever and generally works pretty well, but until there’s a few more content updates I’d stick with either of those games alone. Or Roguebook, that’s pretty similar in terms of gameplay.
 
Kirby's Dream Land is short and uncomplicated, but that ends up being a strength as every second of it is absolutely delightful.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I think people complained about the open world in No More Heroes being empty and pointless, but the sequel feels pretty skimpy without it? Cutting it out and replacing the side jobs with 2D minigames and not really deepening the combat meaningfully leaves it as a pretty basic product.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
You have to buy it directly from the developer's website because of a silly controversy around Chinese censorship, but I recommend Devotion to fans of thoughtful horror games.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Transiruby is a good little chunk of Metroidvania. Really enjoyed it, just as I did it’s predessors, Fairune and Kamiko.

Felt kind of like Cave Story, but with more hunting down little tchotchkes. I think much of that can be attributed to the graphic style.

Anyway; good game, I liked it!
 

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
Finally beat Half-Life². Some thoughts:

1) I'm impressed by what this game pulled off in late 2004. Clever use of physics effects, top-notch facial animation, a world where you're almost always in control (even if that control is just "looking around"), an enormous detailed world...Speaking of the world...

2) The game world does a really good job of feeling large. It's technically a linear game from start to end, but most areas have lots of hidden nooks and crannies and you really have to explore the environment to find the way forward because it's not always obvious.

3) The levels can feel too dang long though, especially with NPC tagalongs getting in your way. As fun as it was to have my legion of ant lions take down fools, I spent a good portion of Nova Prospekt wishing it would just end already. And then most of the remainder of the game throws squads of three or four people at you, which is great when you have to navigate tight environments like apartment buildings.

4) Shame there's no "start with the upgraded gravity gun" cheat. Like, I have no doubt there's a mod for this somewhere if I ever get the Steam version (and a computer again), but being able to lift and throw all the heavier stuff you could barely budge before was amazing and it's a pity it's limited to basically a hallway and one final setpiece area.

Oh well, on to the episodes.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Credits rolling on Deaths Door, which I liked plenty as a Zeld-em-up, but would definitely have liked there to have been a few concessions like an in game map or upgrades being a little less incredibly hard to locate.

I liked it a lot, but I’d definitely give the nod to either Unsighted or Tunic for kore recent Zelda inspired adventure games
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
Kirby and the Forgotten Land was a nice, pleasant game for 98% of it length, then gets oddly serious at the very end. The situation at hand is serious, I mean. Kirby himself is as happy and bouncy as always, even when things get dire.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Credits rolling on Hob, which is an excellent lesser known. Zeld-em-up. Minimalist to a fault, but gorgeous to look at (even Just seeing the map change each time you hit a switch is cathartic). Easy recommendation for anyone who wants to s9lfe some puzzles and explore a land in between chopping up gerblins
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
The Forgotten City was a fun way to spend a few evenings. I don't think it quite stuck the landing, and it wasn't quite what I was expecting going in, but there were some clever turns along the way. Would Groundhog Day my way through morality debates again.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth was a pretty darn solid l’il troid-em-up. Liked it more than Luna Nights in most respects.

Final boss was practically unbeatable for me until I tracked down the Water Magic… then he wasn’t difficult at all. Which describes most of the boss fights but with everything else it was just a matter of figuring out the patterns.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Potato Flowers in Full Bloom is an exceptional dungeon crawler, and I loved every minute of its surprisingly digestible play time. All steak, no sizzle on this one. Every component of the game works perfectly, either for gameplay or aesthetic reasons. Low-poly visuals make every character immediately distinctive and stand out, and frees up the game to do some genuinely neat little visual flourishes (like putting your party in a situationally appropriate little diarama every time you open the status menu, or that the auto-map can be zoomed in and rotated because it’s the games actual map rendered in miniature.

Even the games plot manages to straddle the line between ludicrously low stakes and incredibly high stakes (go get some potatoes from the basement… because planet has been ravaged by an apocalypse and we need to be able to grow some vegetables now that we’re rebuilding).

Real top notch stuff all around, one of my GotY contenders
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
My first playthrough of Elden Ring is done! What a game! There is so much I know I missed the first time. But, which of them do I try to see on my second playthrough and how long do I delay it so I can knock some of these other games I have off my backlog!
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
With Gamepass I decided to try Gears of War 4. I remember vaguely going through the first three games in the series and enjoying them. They were great for couch co-op fun. This one was just as much fun as I remember the others being. Sometimes you're not looking to have to think much about a game. Sometimes, you just want to shoot all the things until they stop moving.

This does that admirably.

PS (it was nice to see the Cole Train again.)
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Finished Horizon 2. It made some improvements on the first, but it also exacerbated some of the modern AAA design problems. I'd play another.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Norco is a point and click adventure that focuses on telling a story over difficult puzzles. It reminded me of Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium. Really good.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
Klonoa 2 is still quite good. Maybe not quite the masterpiece I remembered it as, but darn good time nonetheless.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Beat Banjo-Tooie. There is some charm missing, compared to the first game - things like honeycombs, musical notes, etc. don't explain themselves anymore, but are explained, the faces in the left upper corner don't get tired, as your health gets lower, stuff like that. And the worlds don't feel as charming anymore. Don't know what it is, but the worlds in BK feel so fun to be in. Maybe it's how big the levels in BT are.

Still, I had a lot of fun, and find most of the worlds to be well done. Even, or maybe especially, complicated levels like Grunty Industries, are a lot of work to traverse (I got my first jiggy there after nearly an hour), but they feel very interestingly designed. I wished I could talk more about what I liked, but it boils down to "I like collecting stuff and exploring levels". These levels were fun to me to explore, and I enjoyed the interconnectedness. A shame, that especially that part didn't get explored more further. There was more to do with that, this felt still like a bit of a dry run. A shame that this genre died (even with a handful of indie follow-ups). I wished there were still big budget games, that kept exploring and developing the ideas of the genre.

I mean, there are, but they developed in a more guided direction. I'm thinking of the later 3D Mario games, like the Galaxies, or other stuff like the Sly Cooper games. These are also 3D platformers (and probably better ones, when it comes to platforming), but they aren't collectathons, and don't leave you with small, open worlds, that you can explore.

Thinking about this, I guess that was developed too, in the open world genre. Except, that here, the whole world is open, but is way too big and excessive, for me - I really would prefer the smaller sandboxes of a Mario 64 or the Banjo games. Also, I would probably play an open world game, if the artstyle would go for a cartoony world, but it's always in the direction of realistic graphics, and more "adult" worlds. I'd totally play an open world game that contains weird nonsense like the Banjo games, that are just way more playful and cartoony, than what we get normally.

I know that Mario Odyssey and BOTW are a thing, but I still have no money for a Switch. And even if these would scratch that itch (especially Odyssey sounds fitting), they are only two games in such a long time.

Point is, I miss N64s Rare. I guess no one will ever try to make something in the spirit of Diddy Kong Racing again, which is such a shame. Still by far my favourite Kart Racer, simply because its the only one that thinks "maybe we could make a single-player mode, that isn't an afterthought", and has a world to explore, even if it's small, with levels that sometimes even contain stuff.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Citizen Sleeper is a good translation of modern tabletop RPG design into a story-driven video game with good writing. It's worth checking out.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Beat In Other Waters on Steam. 5 hour game with a great story and incredible atmosphere but a movement interface that is a little too obtuse for the sake of being minimalist. Yet I loved the writing, I loved the idea of the world, the taxonomy stuff is fun and I really enjoy the sketches. It's not quite a visual novel but that's probably the best description I got?


Seriously the interface is gorgeous and the minor changes based on the environment of your dive set the scene wonderfully.

It is on Switch too and I could see the interface working much better on there if the touchscreen is well implemented.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
After plinking away at it since release, I finally finished Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which did a more than adequate job of filling the gap waiting fir Breath of the Wild 2. Not nearly up to BotWs level, but a fine silver medal
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Replayed Astalon: Tears of the Earth, which remains one of the best Troids in recent memory. Unfortunately, either due to a map glitch or something I couldn’t get the 100% map clear that unlocked the Good Ending and a bonus game mode.

Absolutely scoured the map and used an online guide, could not find that last square.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
The Adventures of Lolo was fun and I only needed to look up solutions... 3 times? And the puzzles all made sense, unlike Solomon's Keys' bullshit.

But, uh, what an anti-climactic ending huh. "You are getting closer to the GREAT DEVIL" Oh, wow, he must have a hell of a puzzle.


Oh. OK.
 

RT-55J

space hero for hire
(He/Him + RT/artee)
Lolo's ending is a top 5 NES ending for me --- such a beautifully logical non-sequitur.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
The credits rolled on Psychonauts 2 this evening. Damn fine game. I recall liking minds more in the first game; they felt more distinct, memorable, and thematically coherent. Psychonauts 2 just has some mindscapes to jump into. It plays a lot better than the original, though, and is overall a very well crafted game.
 
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