2021 So Far
Collecting thoughts as I work through the year.
List items
-
Ridiculously addictive, absolutely stunning, lovely music, amazing story about moving on and letting go. Suffered from some pacing and crashing issues, but I played this absolutely compulsively for like 4 days straight.
-
It's more of the same stuff, but that's not a bad thing. More impressively, it brings in content from the rest of the trilogy. It's a great set of systems that allows for everything between the most serious and planned assassinations to absolute delightful chaos.
-
Plays amazing, looks pretty good, has an amazing atmosphere. Honestly, it could have used an in-run save feature, considering each run can be like 3 or 4 hours long. The story ends up sucking; it just bites off more than it can chew.
-
-
-
Yo, I got that PS5. Solid game, too many cutscenes for my liking. Great use of the controller mechanics.
-
Village is weird in that I wasn't sure I actually liked it until I started playing NG+. Then I played it like 7 more times and finished Mercenaries. The challenges system provides a great carrot on a stick to keep playing, and the infinite ammo rewards make the game enjoyable. The story is garbage again, the weapons mostly suck until they're completely upgraded, and the quality of content is so uneven and front-loaded, but DAMN is RE engine magic.
-
It's fine. A "more of the same" Spider-Man 2018 experience, with better music and less ambition. Neat new powers. Again, too many cutscenes, but this time they're unskippable.
-
This was a really pleasant surprise. Somewhat quaint little game, but you can tell a lot of love went into it. It's more accessible than Outer Wilds, which is probably what makes it so enjoyable. There is just enough handholding to make sure you never feel lost, and the story is fairly interesting until kind of a weak finale. There is fun to be had in the optimization of cycles. Some jank, mostly in the trophy pops. WWWWAAAAYYYYY better than 12 Minutes, in that it avoids the vast majority of tedium related to the looping.
-
-
It's a pretty good game if you can ignore the weird fanservice aspects of it. I respect that you can mostly ignore the weapon and armor min/max crafting unless you want to play on a higher difficulty or do the superboss.
-
It's a pretty lazy remaster, I'll admit - most cutscenes are still in their original aspect ratio and resolution, the menu UI still kind of sucks - but it's still an amazing game. It's occasionally deliberately rude and frustrating, but that does heighten the sensation of accomplishment when you leave that dungeon maze in the dust, or put that big, bad boss in the dirt. It is nice they made grind DLCs to take some of the edge off and modernize the experience a little bit.
-
-
An amazing way to break in my Series X - cars always look good on new consoles. Held back by a structure that is way too much "game as a service".
-
-
-
-
The worst part of Psychonauts 2 is actually playing it. The platforming feels straight out of the early 2000s, the combat is just terrible, and the NPC guidance on what you're supposed to do borders on overbearing sometimes, BUT the characters are loveable, the world is bright, beautiful, and colorful, and the story is surprisingly mature - that is, it has emotional depth.
-
I ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would. Challenging little not-Ninja Gaiden with light Metroid elements. Controls could have used some work, and the story could have been dropped completely with little actual loss.
-
-
A little tedious, and the story is slightly brief and derivative, but charmingly written characters, beautiful graphics, and an absolutely transcendent soundtrack courtesy of Amos Roddy.
-
-
-
Kind of a bummer that the greatest innovation the Gears franchise has had in the past 15 years is to shove in some big, empty open world areas.
-
I guess this is one of the most divisive games of the year? A lot of people really love this game. I, on the other hand, found it to be trope-filled and the combat to pale in comparison to greater character action/ARPG titles
-
-
Some neat moments, but ultimately suffers from sluggish controls, and kind of "eh" story and message. Ok way to spend an afternoon, but thank god I rented it.
-
It's an ok-but-still-not-very-good budget title. So oddly balanced, almost like the levelling up mechanic was shoehorned in at the last second. Looking for an easy plat or 1000 GS? Look no further.
-
I wanted more jazz, more adventure, and more gameplay. It's a perfectly fine VN/walking sim experience, it's just not what I thought it was or was hoping for.
-
Nier is not a good game. It wasn't back in the day, and it still isn't, face-lift and gameplay retool and all. I firmly believe most people get tricked by the saccharine and pseudo-philosophical writing of the series into forgiving boring, tedious gameplay. It's made worse that they acknowledge what they are having you do is tedious. Game devs - you gotta knock that shit off. Acknowledging you've made a shitty design decision through dialogue isn't funny and doesn't forgive the decision you made. Just fix it.
-
Tedious with an absolutely embarrassing story. The majority of the star power of the voice cast is wasted.
-
-
Boring with bad mechanics
-
Yo, this game is bad.
-
It's a musuo game that interrupts play every 5 fucking seconds to say something of literally no consequence. I dropped this after the first dungeon.
Load Comments