octavis

This just hit me and i could be wrong but recently i've noticed how at the end of the bombcasts, there's no mention of what's coming up on the site that week/in the near future. i know there's the show page that gives this info, but it feels like more of "going through the motions" than "we're super excited for this and you should be too!"

Grime - Scrolling through I noticed it had "Metroidvania", "Souls-Like" and "2D" tags so I was in immediately. The setting is pretty drab, kinda reminds me of Oddworld since you play as this creature making your way through this world. It has an interesting parry system that allows you to build up a meter to regain health. Otherwise combat is pretty straight forward - I got a standard sword, dual blades, and a large axe but stuck with the sword for the majority of the demo.

UnMetal - Only heard about this from the E3 wrap up when Jeff mentioned it so I gave it a whirl. I thought the jokes landed and the MSG-ness was a lot of fun. There were a couple of times I thought I punched an enemy but it didn't register, but luckily it's not too punishing.

Unsighted - Isometric, Soul-Like in the vain of Hyper Light Drifter. Not sure how far I got in the demo, but I wasn't a huge fan of the enemy movement. Based on the trailer it seems like there's some ranged combat/other things that are interesting but this one didn't grab me.

Death Trash - Longest demo I played and also my favorite. Isometric post-apocalyptic RPG with cool pixel art. The combat is fun and challenging, but the controller layout seems a little weird (like it's made with keyboard/mouse in mind, which is fair) and the I wish the quests had markers/map could be marked. Otherwise a fun time!

Mutant Year Zero (+ DLC) ended up being the game I played the most on my PS4 last year and for good reason. It was hella fun, great difficulty option and engaging story.

@royalghost: That's interesting, because I'm not sure how/if the game intends you to play a certain way, but I travelled west and actually ran into a Duel that I was like 2-3 levels lower and was getting destroyed. I moved on to another area, circled back and it was fine. I think if you are hitting every random battle, yeah you'll probably be over matched for the areas.

For me, the traversal has been my least favorite, even with the shards that return you back to the main hub. Wish there was either more checkpoints per area or you could teleport from your location, to the hub, then back to your location. Oh well.

This is currently on gamepass and I downloaded it on a whim (i'm a sucker for a metroidvania) and it's turning out to be a lot of fun.

You traverse the world, complete with minimap that fills in as you discover new areas. While you're in the world, you have a pet companion that can access hidden areas via flight, corresponding orbs, or slashing walls.

On top of that is the turn based combat with your monster battling other monsters, which you collect after you defeat them. Each monster has their own multi level tree you can dump points into as seen below for just 1 monster:

(credit: https://monster-sanctuary.fandom.com/wiki/Aurumtail)

So far the story has been pretty blah - there's something cool there about a character that is not a master at his job which is interesting, but overall meh. Also there are random battles in the world which occur about every 3-4 screens and can get kind of annoying since the fast track system isn't the best. But that's really it, otherwise i'm loving this game!

I made a concentrated effort to complete 12 games in 12 months, which I was able to do! Some of them were not 2020 games, so I'll list them separately.

1. Journey to the Savage Planet
2. Wide Ocean Big Jacket
3. Ministry of Broadcast
4. Bloodroots
5. Ori and the Will of the Wisps
6. FF7: Remake
7. Keep it Alive
8. The Last of Us 2
9. Carrion
10. Neon Abyss
11. Bugsnax
12. Hades
13. Spider-Man: Miles Morales

And here are non-2020 ones I was able to finish:

1. Shovel Knight: King of Cards
2. Astroneer
3. Hollow Knight
4. The Messenger

I'm in the US and my preorder now says Nov. 12th by 8 PM.

The Bowser sequence in Super Mario Galaxy comes to mind for me.

On the PS4 and playing on default difficulty and only a few hours in, but have found it to be pretty easy.

I find the fact that you have 6 characters to be not my favorite thing. I put a lot of time into Mutant Year Zero last year, so that may be affecting my opinion, but i've found battles so far tedious to try to set everyone up into cover. So far I've just sort of attacked an enemy which allows me to take a turn then figure out positioning.

Another thing, on PS4 at least, I find the perspective to odd. It's like I want to zoom out more but can't? Idk it's hard to explain but feels like it's one of those porting to console things.

RPG stuff seems to be so far so good. Again, having that many party members can be a good thing to have people focus on certain skills, but also can be a lot to keep track of.

So far no huge bugs, my biggest one has been characters not "sticking" to cover and just sort of banging into the wall.

Couple of minor nagging things: on PS4 the quick save is pause + down, down, down, then X. So not really the quickest. Also there is no confirm changes when you put points in characters. Also the inventory is a mess.

Having said that I'll almost certainly finish it or start Cyberpunk whichever comes first.

I heard Griffin Newman on Doughboys and had a long drive ahead of me so I decided to download Blank Check Podcast and give it a spin. I listened to their, I believe, 4th year anniversary ep and, at the time, most recent ep about Lucky Numbers and was hooked immediately. I believe the thing that made me hit subscribe immediately was when someone on the show described the podcast as a perfect overlay vinn diagram overlay of people who listen to movie commentaries and listened to the podcast.

I also am enjoying their recent two directors who are female, Nora Ephron, and female/black, Gina Prince-Blythwood.