2022
Here we go again!
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Started my year off playing and finally finishing this monster of a game. Once this game gets going, it's a nonstop hype train. I loved this game and finishing the original first beforehand definitely heightened my enjoyment of it.
This is not a 'remake' in the strictest sense as a lot of stuff has been changed, but it follows mostly the same story. The gameplay is great and I came to love the battle system. The highlight of the game though is the presentation through its visuals and sound design. The Sound Design and Music are absolutely incredible and there's like 5 different remixes of many tracks for many situations to make things feel somber, epic, and everything the narrative needs. Then there's the visuals which are some of the most absolutely stunning graphics and art direction I've ever seen. It should be illegal for a game to look this gorgeous from every angle. The game is simply beautiful and I want to know what Black Magic Materia they used to pull that off.
What I find scary is that this game's events only roughly covers the first 3 - 5 hours of the original 30 - 40 hour game. This Remake took me nearly 50 hours to beat, so how long is this whole thing going to be and what changes are going to be in store? I am hyped for Part 2 and really bummed out I can't immediately jump into Intergrade since it's not on PS4. Tempted to try a Hard Mode Run, but I'm not sure I have another 50 hours of spare time to do it.
DONE
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A holiday gift from my friend Matt, this is definitely not my usual type of game, but I'm trying it out. Not sure how I feel about it yet, but I must say, starting the game and being greeted by its Christmas Song was a great introduction to the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PKZAhv2Q1g
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Still happily playing this. Still hype and I'm even better at it.
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Played this for Hand Eye Society on Stream. Cute, short game that's deceptively dark. I liked the premise, but it's not always clear where to to go. It takes a while to figure things out when you get lost since the girl has a super slow walk speed and you can't move any faster. Enjoyed the unique experience and it does some very neat perception based stuff but it's about a 7/10 for me.
DONE
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Still playing ocassionally now that Pendulums are in.
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It's free. It's a full on YGO sim with a full card list. It can be fun, but because it reflects the current state of YGO that means it suffers from the many problems YGO currently has, with its constant "Negate everything and your first born child" strategy that all new decks have, which I hate. If you find people that DON'T do that, you can have a good time, but be prepared to just need to surrender after the first turn facing the many tryhards online. My biggest complaint is that because of the extra animations, obtuse menus, and such, the problem of YGO Master Duel is that turns last FOREVER and you can get very bored waiting for your turn as your opponent furiously masturbates through their deck for 15 - 20 minutes. It's YGOPro with extra steps. I will say they give out rewards at the start pretty generously though to get card packs. I would prefer YGOPro if I still played, but as far as sims go, this is good for what it is, but I prefer Duel Links for its better flair, personality, and limited card pool.
Also, Konami, please release my Pendulums from Link Jail. It's ridiculous.
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Finally started this one after buying it on launch.
Still working through it, but man I did not expect the first case to be so amazingly long.
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Finally got into this craze and am getting better...
That being said, everyone's gangsta until they have to remember any 5-letter word.
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Slowing going through it
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Got this last November and trying (and so far failing) to get a routine going. Gonna keep trying.
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Played it a bit on PSNow and I think it's a cool game and very mind bending, but I find the main mechanic of perspective to be slightly flawed and would prefer if the pacing didn't constantly force auto-movement of the character. You can pause movement but it's kinda awkward, especially considering you'll need to constantly move while the character moves. It feels like a beta Monument Valley.
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Got Rise on PC. It feels like a beta version of World. It's miles better than the mess that is classic Monster Hunter, but with half the trappings of World set in Monster filled Japanland. I like it, but not as much as World. That being said, it's gonna feel weird playing World without Palamutes and Wirebugs; they're great additions.
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Played this for Hand Eye Society on Stream. Really unique game and right up my alley.
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Played this on stream for Hand Eye and had the Developers there with me to interview. They even provided the copy of the game. Giant monster and mecha games are my jam so I enjoyed this!
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A fun and great modern Ninja Turtles game. I had a great time with it.
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A sequel to the last Avenger IX game, but it felt even shorter than the last one. I finished it in a single sitting. It's also stupid easy. There's aparently a Hard Mode you have to do a bunch of stuff to unlock, but I cannot care enough for it. The story is nonsense isekai.
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Played this on Hand Eye Society Stream. Interesting sequel
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Started and Playing...
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It's more Splatoon! That's always good.
So far, I do feel it is lacking compared to the first 2 games. Much of the stages, gear, and items are imported from Splatoon 2. The Specials have mostly changed though. This is also the first time I don't really particularly like any of the idols, like I did Marie and Marina.
Gameplay is solid, but there's something about it that makes it feel very slightly inferior to Splatoon 1 & 2. Also the connection issues are much worse somehow. Hopefully they'll get fixed. All in all, it's more Splatoon and that's great.
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Friend bought this for me as a gift to play with him. Really interesting concept playing as some poor schmuck trying not to get nuked by a Dragonball villain. It's a very action packed game of hide & seek with a ridiculous power difference. It's fun and interesting, but the fighting controls are pretty bad in the few times you need to combat against the Raider (Villain). Playing with friends over a call is also really fun.
I do think they need to add more to this game though because its gameplay loop can get a bit stale after a while.
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At last, Bayonetta 3, or as I now call it Bayonetta and the Multiverse of Madness. Platinum really took their staff to see the Doctor Strange films and Spider-Man: No Way Home and said, "this is your job now". It's a wild ride and very hard to sum up my feelings for it, but I think you have to rate it in separate parts.
Story - 3/10: Bayonetta has never been known for its story depth or writing whatsoever, but there is just so much going on, most of which has no build up or explanation. It's easy to follow what is happening, but you'll never quite understand why. This makes things very confusing, yet you can also call most of the plot twists hours in advance. With the past games having Bayonetta saving different dimensions and jumping timelines, Bayonetta has to now save the multiverse and protect other versions of herself, which she fails spectacularly at and for some reason can't say 2 words to almost any of them. All of the Bayonettas have amazing designs so its a shame there is next to no interaction with most of them (Spidernetta is best Bayonetta). I heard in non-spoiler comments/reviews that this game has 'implications' for the rest of the franchise. Oh boy does it ever. Without getting into the details, it more or less retcons parts of the franchise and while it finishes its story, it implies the direction of a Bayonetta 4... Which makes me not want a Bayonetta 4 now or hope that if we get it, they walk back the entire last 30 minutes of the game real quick. The ending was pretty cringe... And that's saying something when the story is as messy as this is. That being said, the climax boss battle of the ending is hype as hell and will make you forget that none of this makes any sense.
Gameplay 8/10: This is the crown jewel of the Bayonetta franchise and I feel mixed about it. It's still the great formula you can expect from a fast paced Platinum Game. However, it feels like a mixed bag for several reasons. There are 3 playable Characters; Bayonetta, Jeanne, and Viola.
Bayonetta: Obviously the game is made around her, so she feels the best. However, she has lost the Umbran Climax system she previously had and now has the Demon Slave Ability which lets her summon various monsters mid-battle, which you can switch between and use them during combos. It is really flashy and cool and I like it, however, it does feel a bit overpowered and can feel like cheating at times since summoning basically knocks down most enemies and bosses immediately. It can sometimes make things too easy and in some cases, I missed Umbran Climax. You can use 2 weapons but they aren't equipped to different limbs anymore. The weapons are odd though because you end up with a lot of them and while they're all supposed to be unique several of them just seem like upgrades to previous ones, meaning you have little reason to ever use the older ones. They all come with their own cool transformations though. Demon Slave cheapness aside, she plays super well.
Viola: This character is the new kid on the block... She plays rather horribly. Viola has a new moveset based on her sword and hand to hand combat. She has one summon of Cheshire who, unlike all of Bayo's summons, attacks on auto-pilot at the cost of her sword. I feel like she was supposed to be like Raiden from Metal Gear Rising mixed with Vergil from Devil May Cry, but she doesn't really work. Whereas Bayonetta's Witch Time is based on dodging, Viola's is based entirely on parrying. Problem is the Parry doesn't really work as advertised and even a proper parry makes Witch Time expire in the blink of an eye so it never lasts. The game isn't designed for a Parry style character at all, it's designed for dodging, so playing with her is a chore and some enemies become nightmares to fight with her. What's odd is that you barely play as Viola at all, despite her being the new big thing; just a handful of levels that force you to use her and she's not very playable by the end. She feels like an unfinished character and ironically plays better if you ditch the sword, summon Cheshire, and start fist-fighting.
Jeanne: While you can unlock her at the end to play normally, Jeanne is mostly confined to some side scrolling spy sections. They're odd, but not bad and have their own charm in her own side story. They don't outstay their welcome. When you unlock her for bonus missions at the end, she plays just like Bayonetta, but worse. She only has Bayonetta's Bat Within to use Witch Time which makes her much more unforgiving to use as a kind of hard mode.
There are some special sections that let you pilot demons in on-rails sections, go on adventurous set pieces, and summon super versions of demons for larger than life boss battles and I like them. I do think the gameplay really suffers with Viola though and Torture Attacks are also less prominenta and no longer give a satisfying mash sequence. I do feel like the combat was much tighter in Bayo 2 compared to here.
Sound 6.5/10: Bayonetta games often have a great soundtrack and Bayonetta 3 does. The music is great. With the weird controversy that happened prior to release, Jennifer Hale does a fantastic job as the new Bayonetta. If you listen closely you can hear a slight difference in voice, but overall she nailed it and doesn't miss a beat, as does the rest of the cast. However, this game has absolutely HORRIBLE sound mixing. Music can overwhelm the voices. Voices can sometimes be oddly low and hard to hear. Some of the voices, the antagonist's especially, would be completely indesipherable if subtitles weren't on by default. It's a bad horrid mix all around, which is a shame because you can tell all the elements of the sound from the music to sfx to the voices are great... But good luck hearing them all in tandem with each other. You will be relying on subtitles.
Visuals: It's very pretty. What else is there to say. I love the designs of the characters, monsters, and enemies. The only character I'm not digging is Viola's design. I hope if she ever shows up again they drastically change her. The game does scale a lot of battles really well to seem epic and that's where the visuals shine brightly. There are a lot of action-packed visual set pieces. I only had one instance of framerate slowdown very briefly that I remember.
Overall: Bayonetta 3 is promising and interesting to play, but it tries to do too much. I don't quite think it hits the mark as well as Bayo 1 & 2 on pretty much any level. The story in particular is completely nonsense with a lot of interesting parts that they don't expand on. However, I give Bayo 3 credit for REALLY delivering on larger than life spectacles better than its predecessors when it wants to. I think this is a good place to end the franchise as it's gotten too nonsense for even this franchise standards, but as is, I'd recommend playing this if you played Bayo 1 & 2 already.
I guess it's a 7.5 - 8 out of 10?
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Had fun with this game. It's a decent length and very engaging. Once you get the feel for the game, you find yourself redoing levels to find all kinds of time-saving tricks. The story was pretty good and I liked the characters.
What did piss me off though is that a lot of this game's mechanics rely on the physics engine working properly with the level design, which it does not some of the time. Particularly anything related to boost jumps with explosions, which do not boost you consistently every time, so you can do everything right and still fail. This isn't too much of an issue until the last 1/4 of the game when precision jumps are key and the game will decide to explode you into a wall on a boost jump instead of upwards like it's supposed to. That can make things very frustrating.
Overall, I enjoyed it.
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Not worth the money, but it's a fun little distraction. It's Kirby Fall Guys. Also the incarnation of "What if Fat Fuck Friday" was a game. It's amusing and I let friends play it to picque their curiosity.
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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is back with DLC despite being released forever ago. The new tracks are pretty cool.
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I tried this game for research and... I was bored to tears in minutes. It is HORRIBLE at explaining how anything in the game works.
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Played this once again a bit with a date. It was a fun game to get back to.
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Still playing this to chill on ocassion.
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A very half-baked game with interesting ideas, but no followthrough. The environment design and world looks top-notch. Too bad you'll never actually get to explore it. The gameplay is alright and I do like the build your own combo feature though it is limited. The gameplay is hampered by progression issues and the design of certain enemies that requires you to either wait or nearly kill yourself to defeat certain enemies in obtuse ways.
The plot and storytelling is by far the worst aspect of it. Nilin is presented as this heroic hero despite having to do some messed up stuff rewriting memories she never at all faces any consequences for. This makes a bunch of the plot make zero sense and makes her indistinguishable from the villains without any self-awareness. Characters are here one second and gone the next with sub-par characterization. One of the major plot points hinges on you rewriting a person's memory so that the accident was their fault... Except it's immediately apparent accident was 100% their fault to begin with anyway and I have to make them stop nonsensically blaming it on an 8 year old that did nothing with logic that makes no sense so they think it's 200% their fault. The plot thinks it's smarter than it actually is and it comes off as incredibly dumb. It's sci-fi with no interest in actually exploring its own thought experiment. Remember Me is a very story-heavy game that hinges on a plot with a thousand holes which is very distracting and makes much of Remember Me forgettable.
The premise is very interesting, as is the world. I just wish this game did something, ANYTHING, meaningful with it.
I did have some fun poking fun at it by playing it on stream though. Got to beat up mutant hobos, the Pepsi Police, Gatoradebots and Milkbots, the Coca-Cola Cops, and the Mugs Rootbeermen, and the Milkmen... I basically named all the enemies after soft drinks lol
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Also played this with a date and brought my two drum controllers. It was nice to try again after a long time.
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I didn't have much high hopes for this, but got into this because some friends wouldn't shut up about it and I came to really like it. It's quick and a nice and chill strategic game that you can play in a snap. There's a lot of deep strategy hidden underneath and it's fun to play. It's like Smash Up, but with Marvel Characters.
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I went back to this game on my phone to try and finish it. I would have finished it long ago, but the game is incredibly buggy. Got a bad ending. I really like what the game is going for, but it glitches and crashes so much that I don't feel like playing it ever again to see its other content, which is a shame. Given how old the game is, I doubt it will be patched. This really could've been something remarkable if it wasn't so buggy.
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