Games Explored in 2019
For a game to make it onto this list, I'll either have finished it or at least passed its halfway point; not just picked it up and played it once. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to gauge its experience properly.
List items
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Complete.
A very interesting and lateral experience. Could definitely tell it was Thomas’s first game but that was part of its charm. When it ended, I simply wanted more.
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Incomplete.
The beautiful art, atmosphere and music, the intriguing story with hilarious dialogue and the wonderfully accessible lateral gameplay all made it such a shame when half way through I irrevocably lost my save data after a steam update. From what I played, I would recommend it, but please back up your save.
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Complete.
This is one of the more engaging classic JRPGs I’ve experienced. Structurally, it’s one of a kind, despite having such a simple premise. I could feel all the passion poured into making this game because it really is an opus of sorts.
The pixel art is beautiful, the music is genius and the story was captivating (seemed uneventful at the beginning but got onto things very quickly). I also loved how unique every character was.
Admittedly, there were moments when I would be stuck for ages, not knowing wtf to do. Its challenges can get interestingly lateral, but never feeling entirely tediously irrelevant, given that there is barely any “filler”. Almost everything always feels like it has a point, which is great. The accessible combat and the world’s immediate relationship with it was extremely refreshing. I’d never noticed, until now, just how disconnected I’d felt in classic JRPGs that would always separate battle from exploration. Plus I was happily amazed with the lack of random battles.
Definitely a gem for me.
What a passionate piece of art.
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Complete.
This game has copped a lot of flack, mainly for the changes it made from its predecessor; particularly given its lack of previously beloved gameplay elements and its new struggle with exposition-dumping due to clumsy theming (show don't tell). Not to mention the issue of having such a large roster of 45 characters that their overall development tends to feel somewhat unfocused and misplaced, especially since we could have had a Janus plot if it weren’t for this decision. (Props to Honeywood and his team for their ridiculously impressive dialogue accent generator though).
However, I honestly felt that the whole experience made up for its shortcomings by simply having a unique approach to its mechanics and gameplay, a nice set of referential yet self-identifying musical motifs, an engaging world with attentive artwork and an overall interesting narrative that was intimately connected to Chrono Trigger. The story manages to inherit the themes of the planet Earth as a living entity and the struggle between humans and technology, as well as placing previous events as having had grander implications than the expectations of youthful naivety, the consequences of the “darker side of time travel.”
This is an enjoyable experience both in its own right and as a mind-blowing continuation. I think a lot of the people who said it had "merely tenuous connections" and “didn’t feel like a true sequel” weren’t really paying attention.
This is a fantastic sequel.
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Complete.
Fairly straightforward, an overall satisfying and quaintly-lengthed platform collectathon. Absolutely love the overall charm with the colourful environments, character design, amazingly expressive 'squash & stretch' animation and fitting voice acting and music. The controls were mostly quite intuitive and I would get a little dopamine rush every time I landed a power cell. Every platform stage was so interesting.
Got a bit frustrating sometimes with hitbox inconsistencies, some occasional inconvenient checkpoint placements and not entirely responsive controls. But overall it didn’t ruin the experience.
Glad I played it. Would probably play again down the track.
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Complete.
I’m not going to act surprised because I had played a bit of this when I was a kid, but sincerely… wtf happened? Why is this a bootleg Rachet & Clank x Grand Theft Auto crossover now? And more-so now a series of dull-coloured open lands with a few things to jump on, rather than the kind of interesting platformer it used to be. I’m not against change, it’s just a very interesting change; and it would have been far more welcome by me if it weren’t for one fundamental problem:
This game shamelessly sports a frustrating artificial difficulty, arguably embodying the very testament of it.
Unresponsive and unintuitive controls, phase glitches, terrible hitbox inconsistencies, offscreen saboteurs, camera spasms, arbitrary fundamental environment conditions; all combined with a brutally scarce checkpoint system, excessive padding, timed missions, overkill scenarios, tacked-on aimless gunplay with no ammo-respawn and plenty of other design-mismatches. I love a challenge, Dark Souls is one of my favourite games for example, but the difference is that Dark Souls is skill-based where Jak II simply isn’t. Jak II punishes you, not for underperforming, but for simply being algorithmically unlucky... constantly. I’m generally pretty Zen with hectic games, but this one occasionally had me literally yelling with frustration and resentment at the screen because of how frequently unfair it was.
The mechanics are predominantly based on dumb luck, often rewarding you with repetitive segments of boring edgelord dialogue amongst occasional good scenes. It has a good narrative, but most of the time for me it wasn't written in a very captivating way. The amazing chemistry between Jak and Daxter definitely helped carry things through for me, plus the 'squash & stretch' animations (though understandably toned down from its predecessor) were still complementary.
This game did improve for me as it went on. There were times when it could really get quite fun in its own way, overall managing to suck me in. Not to mention, I must note that the way the music seamlessly compositionally shifts to match changes in gameplay is very impressive.
Despite the artificial difficulty, I was still very motivated to push on because I wanted to survive till the end. So I did. 29 hours of 70 short missions stretched out by difficulty. I feel that I finished this game more out of respect for the Jak and Daxter franchise as a whole, but I still think this game has its moments and manages to maintain elements of charm (mainly as a sort of weird shadow of its former self).
It's really not a bad game, it's just that it feels kind of broken when it shouldn't and I found that frustrating at the worst of times. I think it ought to be used to teach game development as one of the poster boys for bad difficulty design and I’m very glad that Naughty Dog has significantly improved in that area since.
Overall this is an engaging experience that I think is worth a play, but I'd completely understand if you didn't want to finish it.
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Complete.
Interesting experience. Felt more like a long DLC of Jak II with improvements, or a “Jak II: Repurposed”.
The artificial difficulty attenuated with considerably less offscreen saboteurs, camera spasms and arbitrary conditions; a joyfully reasonable checkpoint system (similar to the first game), no overkill scenarios and funner gunplay with a small but welcome ammo-respawn. Whenever I’d fail a mission, I found myself more often responding through a laugh with “that’s hard” rather than through a sigh with “that’s stupid”, which was refreshing. Admittedly, some segments did suffer from the “longer = harder” illusion, but it didn’t ruin things overall. Things simply felt more based on strategy than luck.
I’ve never been into car games but I surprisingly found the implementation fun at times, though the hoons were annoying, landing island jumps with the dune hopper always felt satisfying. The new Light Jak abilities were a good mechanic, though I wish they were necessary a little more often, along with the Dark Jak abilities as well. As for the platforming, it wasn't bad, but became even less "platformy" than Jak II; clearly inevitably heading this way since the first game.
The chemistry between Jak and Daxter was still great, and it was funny to see Jak suddenly become tempered by his Mad Max world after a mere few missions amongst the wasteland.
The story overall took some interesting turns and I loved the way the environments reflected that, especially with the merge of a Metal Head nest with Haven City. What I found most interesting about the story was actually its implications, given that this trilogy overall really does subtly imply some pretty mind-boggling stuff. Namely that our protagonist is essentially being bound by a cyclical “chicken or egg” paradox of inescapable destiny, where, through time travel, he is destined both to be born *and* to be the ancestral cause of his own birth; rendering whoever his mate is to be both his lover and his great great great great great grandmother. So I think the real question is, does incest count if it's a paradox?
Something that stood out to me was this game’s overall length, at 13 hours for me, startlingly short compared to its predecessor yet with only 10 less missions. I have no issues with this whatsoever, it was just surprising when it ended.
This was a fun game. In terms of gameplay, it felt like what Jak II should have been. I think if the excessive padding and useless missions had been removed from Jak II and some from Jak 3, the two games could have been merged into one really engaging experience; allowing room for Jak 3 to have done something more evolved and to properly resolve the trilogy's story; such as by detailing an adventure back to the past with the Precursors’ help to tie the loose ends of Sandover Village, fight the first Metal Heads, found Haven City and die in a dramatic conclusion... so much juicy potential for Mar's adventure.
Ah well, maybe one day we'll finally see a Jak 4.
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Complete.
This was a very odd experience for me. When I wasn’t playing it, I resented getting back to it, but when I was playing it, I wanted to keep going.
It was very funny, championing all the genius of South Park. The controls were kind of weird at first and the menu navigation was odd, but I got used to it all. It was awesome to have an entire replica of the show’s world to walk around in, though it could get a little bland during long stretches. The art, animation and music style (being pretty much ripped straight out of a South Park episode) was brilliant.
This whole game is pretty much just a long interactive South Park episode which occasionally made me feel like I could just be watching the show instead, especially as I would get tired of the repetitive elements of gameplay and wished things would just progress without me having to sit through it. Honestly though, the comedy pulled me through.
As imperfect as this game is, I have absolute respect for it as a witty satire of RPG mechanics and as another blessing from the minds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
If you’re looking for a revolutionary gameplay experience, I wouldn’t rely on this for it, but if you’re someone who can put that aside and just appreciate having a laugh, this is simply neat.
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Complete.
This game has received a bad wrap due to franchise fatigue, so I took measures to avoid that. Having fatigued most of the franchise when I was younger, after years of abstinence therapy I decided to give them another crack, this time starting with Ascension in order to avoid bias. It was a good move, because despite some flaws, I quite enjoyed it.
The challenges were brutal but engaging, often leaving me physically letting out gasps of relief and “holy shit”s by the end of them, vicariously experiencing the amazing commitment of one tiny mortal stopping at nothing to press on; greatly accentuated by the sheer grandeur and hideous beauty of everything on screen, including both the backdrops and their inhabitants, accompanied by glorious music that was atmospheric and intrinsic-feeling.
The lateral puzzles were clever and creative without being inaccessibly obscure, each leaving me feeling satisfied after conquering them. The climb sequences were much an improvement from the older games in my opinion, as they felt so much more natural to the environment.
The element system was cool to look at but unfortunately had the common problem of being near-pointless to the combat mechanics, given that you could literally beat the whole game using only one of them if you wished. To make up for it though, I loved that you could utilise on-field weapons, that was a nice touch.
The story was a little confusing, with certain things being unclear due to simply an odd structure, occasionally leaving me unsure as to what I was doing and why I was doing it. Nothing a bit of paying more attention, using my head and Googling things can’t overcome though. As a side note, I found both Kratos’ inner-tacklings and his gradual development of trust for Orkos to be quite compelling and touching.
I loved the use of checkpoints, especially because some of the quick-time events were not conveyed very well so there were a few instances of me having to repeat segments over and over again as I couldn’t understand what they were telling me to do, and because the violent controls of God of War games aren't always that ergonomically friendly so my fibromyalgic hands would often take a beating; hence the checkpoint placements were a welcome blessing for both reasons.
The last chapter was a bit anticlimactic as there were more intense happenings beforehand, but it all still looked great because, overall, the interactive cinematic segments during combat throughout this game were simply amazing.
I mourn the loss of this game’s untainted playthrough to the franchise fatigue of many players, because to me (unlike others) it feels like one of the peak gameplay experiences of the original 7-game saga.
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Complete (have finished once before).
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Incomplete (have finished twice before).
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Incomplete.
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