I'm Keeping Track of Every Game I Played in 2022
It's another year, time for some more games that I played for at least an hour.
(I write these over the course of the year, so any passages of time are denoted by dashes between paragraphs)
List items
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The first case of Great Ace Attorney 2 has you play as a different character and it's phenomenal, I love this, game of the year.
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God, case two drags though. I understand why it exists on a conceptual level, but I'm not the biggest fan of "well this thing happened in the meantime and now we'll never talk about it again". The set-up for case 3 seems pretty fantastic, though. Love a good mad scientist.
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Growing up, I played a lot of handheld games. The price point of consoles and their games meant that I only ever had a few to pick from unless I was renting from the local video shop or borrowing a game from a friend. Couple that with the commitment of turning on a TV, game console, and sitting down in front of a game for a dedicated period of time that I may or may not have always had and it's easy to see why I drifted to handhelds with their easy pop in and pop out nature. I still do this now, even with hundreds of games and dozens of consoles - I'll pick up my Switch or GBA before plunking down in front of the TV.
Anyway, Aria of Sorrow was among one of my favorite games as a teenager and holds up just as well today. Beautiful to look at, a delight to listen to, and tons of customization and replayability. Soma is such a fun protagonist, a boy in the longest coat, who is completely out of his element and also able to absorb the souls of the enemies he beats while the adults around him scheme and try to one-up each other.
I think I just love how many options are available. All kinds of weapons that each play slightly differently, tons of enemy abilities and spells to utilize, and a really fun second story mode where you play as a more traditional Castlevania protagonist. I just adore using all kinds of different abilities (though I tend to just look for the Lightning Doll and Force Lightning my way through the game). I absolutely love this game and consider it my favorite Casltevania.
Look, there's a reason why Bloodstained is basically just Aria of Sorrow 2.0.
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Living proof of "out of sight, out of mind" - I apparently played this for about a dozen hours in 2021 and it didn't show up in my Steam recently played so I completely forgot to talk about it!
That's also because it's largely forgettable. Serving as a coda to the Trails in the Sky series, the Sky the 3rd takes all of the characters you know and love and throws them into a remix dungeon, while learning about the mysterious green-haired priest that appeared in Trails Second Chapter. At it's core, it's a fanservice game that lets you make parties of whatever characters you wish. More of the same, but the same is really, really good. I've heard this game sets up the overall plot beats of the Trails series going forward, but having played a future game in the series I have not tripped over that just yet.
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Okay, so yeah, it does kind of setup later games but it's not, strictly speaking, NECESSARY as some have made it sound. I'm gonna miss this gang of dumbasses.
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I will never learn Mahjong, you can't make me.
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Oh, Ys. Nihon Falcom's other long-running series (Dragon Slayer is, technically, what leads into the Trails series and has been around since 1985. The first Ys is from 1987!), Ys has always been a favorite of mine for its incredible soundtracks and action slashing gameplay. Ys VIII maintains that same formula as previous games - Adol crash lands on an island and sets to explore - but keeps the party system from Ys Seven and the Oath in Felghana.
And, look. Look. I get it Falcom. You want Adol to be a blank slate so that you don't have to write characterization beyond "red haired boy loves adventure and swords" but the party system is so bad! I hate having a bunch of randos with grating personalities that I have to use in order to actually beat some enemies. And it's never that interesting to use the rapier lady to stab a bird or the farting axe wielder to smash a crab because I usually just want to use Adol!
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I beat Technobabylon last year, finally, after several years of trying and jumped into a new WadjetEye game almost immediately. Unavowed is a fun modern magic tale, so far.
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I am bad at boomer shooters and I'm at peace with that.
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The Pokemon game I always imagined.
I fell off at some point and desperately need to get back to it, but something about stealthing my way through the countryside, chucking a ton of balls at unaware Bidoofs was just so exciting.
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A very chill, slightly too horny for its own good, 3-star 'fans of the genre' JRPG.
And sometimes that's what I need, especially in this, the neverending nightmare that is existence. Sometimes you want some fun Grandia-style turn based combat mixed with low-key cutscenes of gal pals going on dates. I'm not going to sit here and say it's the most amazing game I've ever played in my life—the framerate is dodgy, non-boss encounters are laughably easy, sidequests are super boring—but I had a good time. It's like the best bits of a slice-of-life anime.
One of your support partners can kick a can into a boss's face and, in that same turn, you can have another partner summon in a DRONE STRIKE. A land of contrasts, this one.
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I've always appreciated the Monkey Ball series from afar, never quite being able to wrap my head around some of the harder stages in the series, but still managing to have a good time. Banana Mania is the first Monkey Ball game I *get*, at least in that I understand exactly how I'm fucking up and really considering getting a Gamecube Adapter so I can have consistent eight-way movement.
When a game makes me want to buy things to get better at it? That's a good game, baby.
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I discovered PC mods for this one and oh my.
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God, I don't even know. On its surface, Astral Chain should be a ton of shit that I'm into. Platinum games developed fighting system mixed with cyberpunk aesthetics drenched in bisexual lighting. It sounds amazing, but it was such an actual chore to play that I had to force myself to finish it just so I could clear some space on my switch and stop having this icon glare at me
While I haven't always loved Platinum's combat in the past (namely, I found NieR: Automata's combat painfully dull), here its really the saving grace. Moves are snappy and once I got my head wrapped around using the Legions, I genuinely had a good time during fights. Shooting dudes from afar and plunking them off with the Arm Legion cannons, blocking attacks using the Axe Legion, just wrapping dudes up and wailing on them with Sword, all good.
The problem is EVERYTHING ELSE. The first issue is the player character and their complete lack of personality. You pick a character and then your opposite gender twin becomes the mouthpiece. Your character does not talk, they just barely react, occasionally grit their teeth, and fight. The game really wants you to empathize with the plight of your twin and I just could not care less! Fuck that dude! He's a whiny little brat, let my cool lady talk or do literally anything, please, I'm begging you.
And issues with the story aside, I hate the way Astral Chain wants you to do platforming using your Legions. Send one out with ZL, navigate it around with the right stick, hit ZR to zoom over to the Legion, realize you've misjudged because the platforming is garbage, fall into a pit and lose 20% of your health and then do it all again! And the game wants you to do this so many times, even during the final boss and it's bad every time!
The biggest issue of all, though, is how the game scores you. Maybe this is my own fault, maybe I shouldn't have played on the first difficulty that actually judges how you do in combat, maybe I would've had more fun if I was just blasting through on Easy, but how the game awards their S+ and D ranks seems baffling random. It seems to prioritize using all of your abilities in one encounter, no matter how much you get your ass kicked. Use every single Legion, dodge an attack perfectly, do a back strike, get demolished and use a revive, scan the enemy, get an S+. Beat the enemy in less than a minute, but only use the Sword Legion to do it and take no damage? A rank. Even through the final encounters, when I had everything unlocked, I was still randomly getting Cs and Ds and I have no idea why.
The whole purpose of judging systems in games, at least to my understanding, is for the game to slowly nudge you to playing the way the developers intended, but if this is the way Astral Chain is supposed to be played, then I have no intention of ever doing that. It's just not fun to me.
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My yearly "hey what if I got really into a gacha game?" attempt.
Nope. Sorry Dragalia Lost.
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A surprise favorite! The PS4 performance is not what I would exactly call "stellar", but I love these characters and the whole story resonated with me. 2022's 2021 Game of the Year.
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I wrapped this one up and I'm still just impressed by how much I truly loved this gang and my time with them. The game chugged like crazy during hectic battles and I don't think I've seen a major release with quite this many bugs and glitches, but still. Really fantastic. Some great emotional catharsis and genuinely touching character moments.
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My "well, I don't know what to play so let's play something quick" game on Switch.
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This is the first game my daughter and I beat together! She would run through levels as Kirby (though she calls him Curvy) and I would play backup as Bandana Waddle Dee. Then, after we played a handful of levels and she would go to bed, I'd hop back in as Kirby to clean up the levels and finish the Missions we missed to get enough Waddle Dees to move on.
Some thoughts - the game progression halting because you don't have enough Waddle Dees is kind of a bummer. It served as a natural stopping point, but it's still frustrating. Also, player 2 being completely unable to do any of the Mouthful moves or use any Abilities seems like an arbitrary limitation. Bandana Waddle Dee does not have nearly enough power to take on some of those later bosses, even on Spring Breeze mode which should have been somewhat easier.
Still, we had a great time. She wants to play by herself now and just do donuts in the car.
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I finally swapped out my Rover and my Harbinger for a Dragoon and a Masurao and oh my god Etrian Odyssey V is a lot easier when you have someone that can block and someone else that can reliably stack damage. Sorry cute dog, sorry scythe lady, I need to be able to actually take a hit.
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It's Kirby but a Metroidvania and wow that map is bad! It's almost as bad as Shantae: Risky's Revenge. Not having immediate access to the map or a clear indication of where to pick up the map is one of my biggest pet peeves. It sucks! I hate this!
The abilities in Amazing Mirror are pretty fun though.
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I think this is the game that cemented the fact that I hate Metroidvanias where you have to find the map first. This and Hollow Knight are fairly low on my internal list of the genre.
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I have never actually beaten Contra, but maybe I can train these old broken hands into blasting through the six stages of Alien baddies. So far, no, but hey, maybe.
Oh god wait there's seven stages, oh no.
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Hoo boy, alright.
Elden Ring consumed a lot of my game time from the moment it came out. I didn't keep detailed notes during my nearly 120 hours of playtime - I just enjoyed the vibes of the Lands Between. I absolutely loved it, though I do think the enemies in the latter half of the game hit just a smidge too hard. Usually one or two attacks was enough to smash my fairly tanky build with 45 vigor (armor that's heavy but not too heavy to roll, two handed weapon, Flame of the Redmanes so mostly Strength), but otherwise I had a great time.
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Forgot to mention that I naturally went with the Age of Stars ending.
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Remember how hard NIntendo tried to push Yo-Kai watch? Wasn't there an anime at some point? I swear there was
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Apparently the game was so difficult and confusing that Phantasy Star II came with its own strategy guide and you know what? I believe that.
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Okay. So. Sometimes I get stuck on certain things. Certain ideas, phrases, jokes, tv shows. Oftentimes, it grinds to a halt when there's a theoretical task I could do. Where, unless I manage to actually Do The Thing, I'm unable to think about anything else. Maybe it's undiagnosed ADHD, maybe I'm just broken inside, but I'm usually able to channel this in beneficial ways!
This is not one of those ways.
You see, I've always been interested in the Phantasy Star games from afar. They seem like neat JRPGs with a sci-fi twist! I started research the best way to play through the four main Phantasy Star games - the best way for the first is to play the Sega AGES release on Switch, but that's just one game. One of the better options I found was to play the Japanese M2 developed Sega AGES release that came out on the PS2. And, what luck, that very collection is available on the Japanese PS3 store. And, oh boy, all four versions have easy mode options that speed up the level and money grind while also having the full english versions available.
Oh, do you have easy access to a Japanese PS3 account, niflhe?
No! No I did not! I do now, though. Creating a Japanese PS3 account online (frustrating), signing into that account on my PS3 (fairly easy), navigating the PS3 store in japanese and trying to search for "Phantasy Star" in japanese (ファンタシースター, by the way (also painful, I forgot there are two different japanese 'alphabets' which meant a lot more time searching')) and then buying a Japanese PSN Card and then finally buying and downloading this game. My brain, finally unstuck. My body, ready. My person, playing Phantasy Star.
Anyway, the game is neat! I wouldn't recommend playing without a guide or some maps because first person dungeons with no in game maps (something the Switch version fixes) is pretty rough. The party is also great with strong female lead, talking cat, himbo, and mage.
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It's apparently the year of Pokemon, as I give Sun/Moon another try. Those were, quite honestly, my least favorite Pokemon games in quite a while, but US/UM is a bit more manageable so far.
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My Dragon Quest journey continueth.
Dragon Quest VII is the Dragon Quest of my childhood, the one that the older brothers of friends were playing and would occasionally let me borrow. If I had to guess, DQ7 is the game that lit the spark of loving old school JRPG combat. Slow and meandering, even at the best of times, DQ7 is probably the most "episodic" of the Dragon Quest games. Each one is about rolling up on a town and setting right what once went wrong, but the island hopping, world traveling, puzzle piece nature of how DQ7 lays out the plot really exemplifies that. It's just a fun time as long you don't try to rush and get to the next plot beat.
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I'm 15 hours in and still haven't hit the Dharma temple oh my god how long is this game. I just wanna class change. They've managed to subtly rewrite Maribel to make her, well, still kind of an asshole, but a loveable one.
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I didn't think I'd be too interested in a Gen IV remake that didn't pull from Platinum, but you don't have to carry around two HM only Pokemon, so maybe this one does win out.
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I played through Blue Reflection and thought, "man, Grandia-style combat is so good, I wish I could play more of that"
Hey, you know what game I never finished.
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The introduction of Emmy and the origin story of Luke! It's more Layton and a new antagonist, which I'm down for.
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Not... stellar, the story of this one, but I had a good enough time. I'm not really here for the overarching story of Layton, I'm really just here for the puzzles, but at least the games realized they were criminally underutilizing Flora and set this one in the past so they didn't have to deal with the specter of the best character they just always left behind.
The final puzzle where Luke and Emmy work together to stop a rampaging robot was pretty great, all said.
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Oh, Tunic. Where to begin?
I think Tunic is a neat idea in theory. Presenting itself as a beautifully crafted Zelda-like where nothing is explained except the barest bold words in english. There is the East Forest, a Sword is there, ring the Bell. Picking up manual pages that actually explain key concepts and sprinkles hints is incredible and I loved all of those moments.
What I didn't super love was the language and what it takes to decipher it. I'll be completely honest and say that the hints presented in the game (specifically the final few manual pages that show all of the symbols and characters) did not help me out tremendously. I wish the hints were just slightly more clear or at least there were several other hints for people who's mind was not tuned just right.
Or maybe I'm just dumb. Who can say.
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I've been doing another Nuzlocke! This one is going a good bit worse because none of the original 150 have good moves until much later. A lot of my early Pokemon went down to random crits. I managed to snag a Nidoran♀ thanks to a Shiny clause exception and an Abra to pure luck, those two have been my main two so far. Nidoqueen has Slam now and is just bodychecking every single threat out of the way. Alakazam just tears up fools left and right because Dark-type pokemon? I don't know them.
I love them both and if I lose either one I will dissolve into a puddle.
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lol welp. Lost Savanna the Alakazam to Blue's Gyardos because I'm dumb and thought Reflect would help. It did not! A crit's still a crit. I've been losing a lot more Pokemon in this Nuzlocke, mostly because I'm playing a little fast and loose - Laredo the Ivysaur went down to Giovanni in the Rocket Hideout (that Kangaskhan is no joke) and Washington the Pidgeotto got annihilated by a random Self-destruct.
I do have a Gengar now, though, so I might teach it a neutral coverage move (like Thunderbolt or Psychic) and have it act as my Self-destruct/Explosion buffer. I still have a good number of Pokemon in backup, about a dozen, so I should be okay. My team as it stands right now:
Snorlax (Morgan), Gyrados (Myrtle), Nidoqueen (Delphi), Ninetales (Nyx), Gengar (Cola), Weepinbell (Nati).
The other issue I'm running into now is one of movesets. FireRed/LeafGreen is *dire* for early moves. Gyrados is still running Tackle because I haven't pulled the trigger on Return and by this point, I might as well wait until I get Strength. Return is a single use TM and I have at least three other pokemon that would make good use of it. Ghost-type is Physical damage! Why is Ghost type Physical!! Boltbeam coverage would be great on Gengar, but all of the TMs require the Game Corner and that gets expensive quick.
I need to replace that Weepinbell. It's going to get lit up during the next portion and I need something that can reasonable help with Koga. I could maybe run over to Cycling Road and try to snag a Doduo?
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From Koga to the Elite Four, the only other Pokemon I've lost is one of the Doduos I picked up while they hit extremely hard with Tri-Attack, they also get rocked pretty easily by a random Machoke with Revenge. Whoops. Right now I'm grinding my team up to the late 50s because there's such a gap between Giovanni and the Elite Four! My team is the same as above, just with Jersey the Dodrio replacing Nati the Weepinbell.
I *think* I'm in a good place for the Elite Four. If I really wanted to steamroll them, I'd maybe try to get my way through the Seafoam Islands to grab Articuno (I did my usual Seafoam Island skip and just surfed down from Pallet Town) or maybe try to get Zapdos, but I think I'm okay for now. Gengar and Snorlax can probably take on most the Elite Four by themselves, I'm mostly just worried about PP usage - something I've almost never thought about once in my entire life playing Pokemon.
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the grind from the low 40's after beating Giovanni to 60 in order to stand a chance against the Elite Four damn near killed me. Blue's Charizard just about one-shot my Gengar with Fire Blast and I'm extremely grateful that it didn't. Took two Thunderbolts to knock out, but I managed to not lose anyone.
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The first GBA Klonoa! It's a puzzle platformer!
That's it, that's all I got. It's a very good platformer.
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Austin Walker on Friends at the Table voice: I've added two new clocks.
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A rather enjoyable text adventure, though I felt like I had "solved" the clocks as much as anyone is ever able to solve their emotional and physical needs. I wish the game had more clearly signposted the importance of Lem and his daughter as something like half of the endings are locked behind hanging out with him and watching over Lem's daughter - a fact I did not realize until I had nearly completed the game and went down other paths (I ended up going with Bliss - I had other options available, but that one felt the most in-character).
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As a child of the 90's, I've always been a Turtles fan. I grew up on the cartoon and the NES games, even when my art teacher showed us an episode and just shit-talked the animation the entire time as lazy and cheap which I realize now in retrospect was a really weird thing for him to do? We were sixth graders, what the hell.
I have a fondness for that rough NES game, which I think my cousin and I managed to beat, but only once. I have the dam level memorized in my head, though I'm not entirely sure I could execute on it. But when I got a Super Nintendo and the local rental store got Turtles in Time?
Oh, baby. Oh, we were off to the races.
Shredder's Revenge is good! I should try it out with more people, but at its core it's a good time.
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Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is hella horny and a cacophonous mess at all times. Every hour or so, it takes a deep breath to lore dump on you, give you a new mechanic and flash a tooltip at you that will never appear again, only for the story to kick back in at warp speed to jettison you to the next plot beat.
I love this game, is what I'm saying. Put more Welsh catgirls in your game.
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About thirty hours in and finally passed Chapter 4. I swear, I get a handle on the combat only for the next boss to just completely wreck me. Still, the Driver Combo of Break, Topple, Launch, Smash feels incredible when you pull it off and I will never not pop off when you smash a monster down to the ground and just shred off a quarter of their health.
I think I have maybe finally seen the code of the universe to understand how the elemental system works, because wow! That system is not well explained!
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Not sure why they decided to lock Easy Mode and 2-Player mode behind unlocks, that's super dumb, thanks guys. I'm already not great at this game and your idea is to make it even harder?
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I like to ride an exercise bike three times a week while playing a game and Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE is my game of choice right now.
I... look. You're several games into this list. You know what kind of games I like. It should not surprise anyone that I really like JRPGs and Fire Emblem and Persona. I'm not going to be controversial and say that TMS♯FE is a better Persona 5 than Persona 5, but I COULD (and it is).
Sometimes I just need a linear narrative without a dumb fucking framing device that doesn't actually make any sense that takes great pains to hide information from the player because of said framing device and oh my god Persona 5 is so dumb and Royal somehow managed to not actually fix their issue with character writing or transphobia while also making it feel twice as long and it just sucks how they keep tripping over their own feet I swear to god
ANYWAY. I like TMS♯FE. I like these characters, they're fun to hang out with, I wish the main guy had a bit more personality besides just being the generic stand-in producer boy. He's extremely eloquent when drinking soda, and I feel that in my bones. Let your freak flag fly Itsuki! Get weird! Vocalize your thoughts on weird grape sodas!
Don't play the Wii U version, buy the Switch one instead, being able to speed up battle animations saves several minutes per battle, for real.
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Hey babe, new type of guy just dropped, super horny detective that is somehow both the grossest man imaginable and deeply, deeply attractive.
Wish this game had a bit more alternate paths going on a la Zero Escape, but those did get away from the game a bit, I suppose. With Zero Escape's huge branching paths, I sort of lost the thread of where each scenario was going toward the midgame where you're jumping back and forth so often, so just having a few in Somnium Files makes sense. Having little summaries on each case file helps reframe what's going on when jumping around the timeline and I will always love a game that includes brief summaries of story beats.
Interestingly, I managed to get an actual ending fairly quickly (with maybe one branch off?) on my first playthrough (the Mizuki ending) which I don't think is intended.
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Having finished the game, I think the multiple paths end up working pretty well, though I do wish there were just a handful more rabbit holes to tumble down. Not nearly enough discussions about morphogenetic fields or Ice-9, though there is one explicit reference to 999 that made me pop off like no one's business.
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I'm not generally a cockpit view kinda guy. When I'm playing a racing game, I like to be as far away from the car so I can see all around me. Something about being in the cockpit of a jet fighter, whipping the camera all around to get a bead on an enemy, seeing the frame of the canopy... It's just a ton of fun.
I have no idea what's going on in the story, mind. It's anime nonsense.
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Devil May Cry is a series I had the hardest time getting into. When I was much younger, I picked up a used copy of DMC3 from my local Gamestop for a neat fifteen bucks. Unfortunately, this was the super hard version that came out in the States and completely took me apart as I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. I think I made it to the first boss and put the game down.
Later, I picked up Devil May Cry 1 and didn't really gel with it until much later in the game when you get the ability to just punch fools in the face with a pair of gauntlets. That "unlocked" DMC for me, along with the knowledge that jumping is your dodge because why on earth would that be your dodge, Dante, why is your jump basically invincible. That doesn't make any sense you're in the air and should be easier to knock down, does anything ever signal that?
But yeah, I ended up enjoying DMC3 as part of the HD Collection. My loadout didn't change throughout most of the game - I think I primarily stuck with the sword and gauntlets (how DMC1 of me) along with the pistols and shotgun. Fairly basic, but I did play around with all of the weapons and styles for a level or two. Really great time, all around.
I don't think I'll do a full playthrough as Vergil, but he's fun to mess around with.
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I have not put too much time into Paradise Killer, but the naming convention going on here is just incredible. Top tier names, all of them. Her name is Lady Love Dies. LADY LOVE DIES. Amazing. Absolutely impeccable. 10/10, no notes.
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Oh, Dragon's Dogma. You are endlessly fascinating but I just do not have the time or patience to fully dedicate to you. Interesting quests, a good day/night system, a huge world to explore, the entire Pawn system which rules, the class system, everything I should love in an open world game is here, but there's just enough jank and crust around the edges that I don't have the time to sand off myself. If I had more time, or more patience, I'm sure I would love you as many others do.
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A playthrough with my daughter - she controls Mario, I keep a controller on standby so I can pick up to help whenever she needs. She doesn't want me controlling Cappy, she prefers handling everything, and she definitely doesn't like doing the transformations (much like how she played Kirby). She wants to run around at Mario and that's fine with me. It's interesting to see what parts of the game she's interested in versus not. She really loves running and jumping, grabbing moons, and exploring but doesn't like the side-scrolling bits or the boss fights.
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She (read: Me) beat the entire game! She needed a bit more help in the later stages of the game that require a lot more reading and mechanical complexity, but I think she had a pretty good time. She wants to dive back in to just explore some of the worlds we ran through.
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I played this so I could understand a lot of fanart I saw. I get it now.
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All of the original characters from the Super Robot Wars games, stripped of the shackles of having to tie a bunch of anime universes together. The plot moves at a million miles an hour still, but I do like the original mechs a lot, he noted, staring at model kits of the Alteisen and Cybaster.
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I ended up buying a Gespenst and Cybaster model kit. I'll likely buy an Alteisen in the future, too.
Game's good, btw.
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I don't think it'll surprise anyone to say that I love mecha. Gundam, Mazinger, Votoms, Voltes V, Evangelion, anything and everything. You put a troubled teen into a giant robot and use that as an extension of the self and to ruminate on the meaning of the personhood, community, and duty? I'm all about that.
Super Robot Wars also says, "yeah that stuff is great but isn't it rad as hell when Judau uses the High Mega Cannon while 'Silent Voice' plays in the background?"
Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty rad.
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I watched a bit of Alex and Vinny playing through True Colors before deciding to play through it myself. Same thing happened with the original Life is Strange, if I recall.
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I did not realize this game was a sequel for an extremely long time, why on earth would you title it that way! Slap a big freaking 2 on there! Why would you do this!
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I've come to a conclusion about myself. Maybe I should have realized it long ago, but Pokemon is my zen, chillout series. No matter what's going on, no matter if I'm stressed or tired or anxious, I can pop in a Pokemon game and just relax for a little bit, whether I'm catching guys, or leveling up, or just trying to find a good spot to do some early EV training.
I found out online that fans are still running all of the old Mystery Gift events, which means I can start a new game, pick up an early game Axew, and just have a good time steamrolling through some of the early gyms. What, you thought I was gonna roll up with a Snivy? Absolutely not, here's a Dragon, give me your badge.
I likely won't be going for a full Pokedex completion (something I've already done in a future game, which renders that kinda moot here), but I'll definitely be using some of the other Gen V exclusives I never did. I actually never used Haxorus, Excadrill, or Scrafty in my first playthrough of White and those are... kinda the big three of Black/White.
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I enjoy the Tales games, the B tier series of JRPGs that never quite seem to live up to my memories of them (or, at least, my memories of Symphonia). Berseria is a game I put a decent chunk of time into on PS4 but saw there were a few mods on PC that looked interesting to try out. Turns out, mostly kinda boring nude mods that really, fundamentally, do not understand human anatomy. There's a pretty good texture mod and some character clothing change ones that are fun, though.
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This year's dive into a visual novel, the writing seems top notch but the character designs are garish to look at and I think I really dig it?
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Oh dear I am not going to jive with this combat system very well am I. (no).
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Made it to the second main "area" but I think I can see the writing on the wall and how repetitive this will be. Might look up a guide or something to see if anything big happens.
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I've only played a little bit of Heaven Will Be Mine so far, but it's basically the best parts of Counter/WEIGHT from Friends at the Table and Gundam - the parts where you flirt with your rivals while the world collapses around you, trying to escape the inevitable gravity of Earth and yourself. Really sharp writing.
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A fun, cutesy 3D platformer! Sometimes the background transforms into a literal nightmare and wow, that caught me off guard!
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It's Huniepop: Threesomes edition. Characters are not nearly as well fleshed out or as interesting and it seems criminally easy to sleep with all of these women. The first game made you work for it by playing a ton of a fun Bejeweled clone and had multiple scenes for each individual.
It's the Banjo-Tooie problem all over again. More doesn't mean better!
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As I looked through my Steam listing, looking at the games I hadn't yet played, I found this little game from Christine Love that I had forgotten about. I quickly replayed through Analogue to remember the events of the first game and dove into Hate Plus. It's a good(?) time, well told, much like my love of Sam Barlow game mechanics, I'm all about obfuscation through technological impediments.
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A celebration of Sonic with a nightmarish level progression system that I still don't completely comprehend. I think you have to do a lot of the challenges in order to unlock more things, but I'm not sure and Sonic sure as hell isn't going to tell me.
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I love regency era romance novels, I love Solitarica. The two go hand in hand surprisingly well.
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A fun little adventure game!
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A fairly short but impactful photography game set in the shitty future of New Zealand. A lot of words by much smarter people than me have been written about Umurangi, but I found the final three levels genuinely impactful. Environmental storytelling at its absolute finest, go play this game.
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Another one of my deep rabbit hole dives, but this one was fairly easy to solve - I had considered buying a PS2 memory card with Free McBoot in order to play copies of games over ethernet cables linked between my computer and PS2, but then I realized, "wait. i just built a computer. i can... probably just emulate this"
And I can! MS Saga is likely not many people's first choice of rare PS2 game to emulate, but it's a fascinating little experience. Turn based JRPG meets Gundam customization - you start off with a GM and a Zaku I (hell yeah, a Zaku I, get outta here Zaku II) and can slowly build them up and swap on and off parts. These parts alter your stats so you can make some really wild custom Mobile Suits. Want to make a GM with Gouf shoulders and Dom Legs, paint the whole thing a garish neon yellow and dull green, and then slap on two beam sabers? World's your oyster buddy, give it a stupid name like Gold Dog, and go with god.
The character designs are an actual crime, the story is extremely light, but it's just a ton of fun to put two Zaku arm shields and two shoulder mounted cannons onto a unit and let it just start blastin'.
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More chill, comfy vibes. Really a perfect Game Pass game.
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I have a deep, abiding love for the *mechanics* of Sam Barlow's games, even if the stories largely pass me by. I absolutely adored Her Story, what I would consider my game of the year from 2015. The story told there was nothing special, but the act of scrubbing through archive footage, querying databases, and forming connections all while focused on a singular actress was fantastic.
Immortality feels like a natural progression from that formula (and, I suppose, from Telling Lies, which is on the short list to play). This time literally scrubbing through archive footage, backwards and forwards to find interesting things that, again, literally form connections to other pieces of footage. Find an item, object, or a person in a scene, click on them and then be transported to another piece of footage, rinse and repeat. Maybe the link you made started you later in the scene than you expected, is there anything interesting if you rewind? Is there anything around the edges if you watch before and after the clapperboard?
Immortality feels a bit more... artificial than Her Story - my connections never quite seemed to lead where I was expecting and it felt that the much reported "find the exact right frame" nature never quite clicked for me. It seems like the strings between scenes are laid out in a categorized fashion rather than actually "matching" your selection. For instance, if you click on a scene of Marissa in a certain scene in Ambrosio, it seems to always lead to the same scene in 2 of Everything - the angle or match didn't seem to matter. A gun always lead to the same gun, the light of a car headlight to an overhead light in an apartment. Not bad, necessarily, but not exactly organic.
Still, I had a great time! There are some moments here that truly surprised me and several more that made me jump. The story under the story, your SEO friendly "What's *really* going on in Immortality" is not super interesting to me.
What I'm really trying to say is that I wish I could have a Blu-Ray of Minsky. And maybe Ambrosio.
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A shmup that appears to have more under the surface, but I'm the worst at the second level which has autoscrolling bits in tight corridors - something that always fucked me up in Ikaruga and continues to be the bane of my existence here. Just let me be a little lad at the bottom of the screen, please, I'm begging you.
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I was an N64 kid.
Shocking, I know. The only time I played Spyro in any meaningful way was when I went to Disneyworld and Universal Studios with a friend of mine back in elementary school and we spent a rainy evening after being at Universal Studios all day renting Spyro as part of the in-room entertainment hooked up to the TV. It didn't much register with me that this was one of the big tentpole Playstation releases and largely passed me by, even when I was given my own PS1 - I never played the Crash games until much, much later.
And, I think, I might like Spyro more than Crash? Large levels with a fun-to-control character, tons of collectibles, and a lot of charm. Doesn't make a huge splash, just a fun time. All of the dragons popping out to just trash talk Spyro is a great bit.
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This continues to be my podcast game of choice when I have nothing else to play. I wish the assassin stabbing bits just murdered dudes instead of doing a ton of damage, I already have a teleporting stab move just let me be an assassin! Let me assassinate!
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There's a gunpla building minigame and you have to wait fifteen minutes real-time in-between downloading programs from the local BBS, incredible. I love it.
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A Pikmin-style platformer where you're collecting bits from around a very junk filled house. There's no growing or Pikmin-harvesting mechanic though, you find the Tinykin in each level and you're given enough to progress through all of the challenges in that level - as long as you look in all the nooks and crannies.
I do wish I could throw more dudes at an object they're carrying to get them to speed it up a smidge.
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As with a few games on the list, I discovered that the PC modding community for Stardew is *wild*, with dozens of mods being uploaded and expanded upon every week even now, years after the game's release. I started a new farm with Stardew Expanded which adds new NPCs and greatly expands the scope of Pelican Town and have already played about a dozen hours just having a great time exploring a game I love to death.
Some of the mods, like NPC Map Location (that shows roughly where everyone is on the map), Automate (place a chest with items next to a machine to have the machine auto complete), Experience Bars (shows how close you are to a level), and Seasonal Outfits (gives villagers different clothes for Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter) are so vital that it feels wild that they aren't included in the main game. I fear that it may be impossible for me to go back to vanilla Stardew Valley when I've gotten so used to just plopping a chest down next to a furnace to crank out some copper bars while I go fishing. Want to know the price difference between that silver strawberry and a gold one? There's a mod for that! And it's so easy!
In the interest of full disclosure, because I would never lie to you, I did try out a few of the sex mods because Stardew can be a little stoic sometimes. Maybe the community did some really thoughtful work in creating content and writing about sex and sexuality! For many, sexual compatibility is an important part of dating and finding the person (or people, for some of these mods) that you may want to spend your life with. Real life isn't about just giving someone fourteen amethysts and calling it a day.
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lol the first sex mod has an extremely long (like, uncomfortably long) and misspelled sex scene between Pierre and Caroline and the other has everyone masturbating all over Pelican Town. Welp.
I also tried out an anime portraits mod that was interesting stylistically, but it doesn't cover everyone in Stardew Valley Extended, so I sadly had to uninstall. Let me see anime Susan!
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This game feels like someone told Kojima "bet you can't make a weird walking simulator" and he went "bet."
I need to spend more evenings with it, but I think Death Stranding might rule?
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A confession from me, your friendly list curator. Orcs, elves, goblins, halflings, all of those fun fantasy races? I find them endlessly exhausting, bordering on boring. You throw me into a story where the elves are ethereal and eternal, high on their own supply and orcs are just menacing brutes and I'm fucking snoozing, y'all.
Coffee Talk avoids this, but only just, by making the characters actively push against those boundaries imposed by society and racial order. I still find it a little exhausting and I rolled my eyes so hard when the human writer who likes to live in your coffee shop say, "hey what if i wrote a book where ONLY HUMANS EXISTED" I'm going to lose my mind, I swear to god.
Also, being married to an author, the idea of someone selling their manuscript on literally nothing more than a 'yeah i'll have something done, probably' without a blurb or couple chapters or even a proposal and then only having a week to get it done is... a lot. It's a lot. Do you know how long a book is? A book is really long!
ALSO ALSO, the main character is a bit too much of a character. The mysterious bartender is a fun character trope but it doesn't super work when we're supposed to be the bartender. Jill from VA-11 Hall-A works well at being mysterious because she feels like she is intentionally hiding parts of herself from both her patrons, herself, and the player. A 'I do not perceive this so it does not exist' mantra. The player in Coffee Talk just feels like they're hiding shit to hide shit.
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I wasn't super impressed by my first exposure to Psychonauts 2. A game six years in the making, a long awaited sequel to a formative game for many... I played through the first level last year and felt pretty whelmed by the whole experience. Gameplay was still a little floaty, the jokes didn't quite land, everyone's faces looked like they were melting off their skeletons, but like, in a bad way.
Anyway, I recently bought Game Pass for a good long while, so I gave it another shot and had a much more enjoyable time. I wonder if my mind was just looking for reasons to be a hater or if the game actually felt off because of the slight lag caused by playing over the cloud, but it felt better this time! Sometimes it's a me thing, not the game, and that's totally fine.
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A good Metroidvania from a few years ago with a very annoying mechanic in order to get the "good ending" where you have to find the exact right screen, use an item you haven't used anywhere else to find a magic hot spring. Annoying, but otherwise a lot of fun.
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I don't have much of a personal connection to the Record of Lodoss War series, but this game makes me want to give it a try. Wonder Labyrinth's main mechanic is that Deedlit has two magic types available to her at any time: fire and wind. If you have your fire magic selected and a fire attack hits you, you absorb the attack and regain a little bit of MP and the same with wind magic.
A lot of the game plays with this mechanic in fun ways - traversing through corridors where you have to rapidly swap back and forth, enemies that are immune to one type of magic but not another, boss fights in lava filled arenas where you can switch to fire magic and quickly regain your magic to pop off more spells.
The other "main" mechanic is leveling up those spells but this one felt a bit more contrived: at level 3 fire or wind magic you do more damage when attacking with your weapon. Additionally, at level 3, the selected magic will slowly refill your health, but getting hit drops you down a level. Almost every boss had the ability to quickly get up to level 3 fire and wind outside of the boss gate and I never really felt the gimmick was necessary. Useful, sure, but maybe needed a bit more time.
Finally, the game is absolutely gorgeous to look at. Just some absolutely beautiful pixel art; not since Alucard in Symphony of the Night have we had such a purposeful and detailed trudge.
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Quite simply one of the greatest games of all time, full stop.
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Y'all they put a full ass Dark Souls clone in this character creator how wild is that?
(i have not gotten very far, i do not know how to get to the next stage)
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Absolutely beautiful. Grungy and stylish pixel art mixed with some of the best video game writing and sharp commentary about the way capitalism crushes people and their spirits. Quite possibly my game of the year for 2022.
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You, hapless dipshit, are pulled out of a river by a mysterious woman and she asks you to explore the nearby ruins to find her friend, Al. You're then dropped into a ancient Roman city where you are told these two things: someone is about to break the cardinal sin of the city whereupon everyone will die and there is no escape. You're tasked with finding the sinner and saving the city.
The Forgotten City has a wild premise to start out with, but the first time you, or anyone, really fucks up and the statues come to life to carry out the Golden Rule is terrifying. You think you've gotten away with stealing some life saving medicine from Desius and the game gives you just a second to think you did and then the heavens boom, "the many shall suffer for the sins of one" and uh-oh, gotta get back to the portal to start the time loop over because there's four statues here shooting arrows at my throat.
I was expecting more time-based shenanigans, to be honest - events don't happen until you trigger them which is both useful and kinda silly. Fabia will tell you about an assassin coming in via the baths, but until you actually go near the baths, there's no issue. I actually forgot about it for a while and it wasn't until I was chatting with Equitia about a separate task where she asks to meet in the baths to discuss something important. I told her an assassin is in there and she responded with basically, 'uh. shouldn't you be... taking care of that?'
'oh. yeah. probably? probably.'
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Really enjoyed the Forgotten City, though the character models look ever so slightly like ass. I ended up getting the golden ending, where you save the maximum number of characters possible.
Also, I just want to say that I instantly clocked who Karen was. Like instantly.
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I think I'm going to have to firmly ensconce myself into the role of being an Ori disliker. The game is absolutely beautiful to look at, but the act of playing it feels, for lack of a better descriptor, "fiddly". Ori feels hard to control and the platforming demands a lot of precision that is not easy or fun to execute.
For instance, one early section gives you a wall jump, neat! You're then supposed to climb up a section of wall, bouncing back and forth to climb up - easy. However, there are brambles on both sides that you're supposed to avoid, but because of how squirrely Ori is and how rough the actual jumping feels, I found myself dying on these spikey brambles over and over. It's a bummer, because there are some bits where the game lets Ori loose to run and jump and those sections feel pretty good! It's when you have to be precise that it feels awful.
Also, I think the ability to save anywhere shouldn't be so limited and also shouldn't be tied into the ability to blow up rocks! There's been at least two instances where I saved after a challenge, but then had to backtrack to find crystals to power up the ability to blow up a rock to continue.
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I don't know about these escape sequences, gang. It's really the Uncharted problem all over again - dying during what's supposed to be an intense chase scene or setpiece feels *awful*, and it feels especially awful here in Ori because you're jettisoned all the way back to the beginning of the sequence. The Uncharted games have the decency to set checkpoints along the way so at least you start a part of the way through the action. I can't help but feel like this is another consequence of Ori's save system, but it's also bullshit because the game DOES checkpoint you sometimes! Come on, Ori.
Also, the Bash ability feels great, but I'm finding it really hard to get a sense of how big the range on it is. Do I need to be right next to what I'm bashing off of or can I be a little further away. How about a good bit away? Some kind of ring or indicator would be helpful.
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I'm not what anyone would call great or even competent at text adventure games, but having a hint guide next to me as I stumble my way through this swashbuckling adventure helps.
Sometimes the leaps of logic are just too much for my modern day gamer brain. In one sequence you have to remove your chemise, tear it into rags, dip the rags in water, and then go like eight screens away to throw it at a fire to put it out.
That is.... not how I would go about that. I'm not sure that's how anyone would go about that.
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i dunno, this seems neat but i'm a little bored.
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I realized while playing Immortality that I had skipped over Barlow's precious game, Telling Lies. And hey, it's on Game Pass!
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An hour or so in and I find myself being categorically bored by Telling Lies. The performances aren't as dynamic, the long pauses between one-sided conversations feel awkward to sit through and the shortest video clip I've come across is still over two minutes. The intrigue isn't as present from the start and everything feels like it takes just a bit too long.
I can see this as the natural middle point between Her Story and Immortality, but ultimately I don't find myself nearly as enthralled in the mystery going on here - mainly because the mystery hasn't even been revealed yet.
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Reading a summary of what happens and all I have to say is wow, that sure would've been neat if any of it had been explored in the time I spent with it. Unfortunately I could not bring myself to care. The idea has merit (and, as Immortality would prove, can be phenomenal), but I came across two different eight minute long clips of the same conversation and I just cannot fucking care, gang.
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Dipping my toes into Lucasarts wider catalog. This one is cute so far!
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The grand, sprawling epic of an SNES JRPG that we never got in the States. I love Illusion of Gaia and Soul Blazer and I think Terranigma might be incredible? There's one puzzle early on that's kinda dumb in a "go talk to everyone, dumbass" way (the Crystal Thread Cape), but otherwise, incredible!
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I cried when I saw the announcement for the Live A Live remake. I might have also cried a little bit when I started up the remake and heard the Near Future battle theme, a theme that still lives rent free in my head, almost fifteen years since I first played the original.
Live A Live is one of my favorite games of all time and one of the greatest SNES RPGs. I first would have played this during the summer of 2008 during what was not a super great time. Live A Live was a solace then, tons of different bite sized scenarios to chew through and, even though I was spoiled by the internet on how everything played out, I still had a tremendous time.
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Mini-reviews for each scenario (in the order I went through them):
* Near Future - a lot shorter than I remember! Good introduction to the combat mechanics, Akira is a lot of fun. A little nonsensical, but there's also a giant robot, so it's all good.
* Distant Future - this chapter is so much longer than I remember! There's tons of interpersonal drama and this chapter maybe feels the most bogged down by the design of 'Go here, now here, now back to there' of any of the chapters. I remember the monster segments as being infinitely scarier in the original, but it's pretty easy to avoid here.
* Twilight of Edo Japan - Oboromaru's scenario might be one of my favorite stories attempted in a JRPG. Do you go full stealth and avoid killing anyone or do you just go hog wild and slaughter everyone in this castle. The full stealth option (with a +40 attack katana reward) was the path I went with and there were only one or two points that felt truly out of place in a 'i'm supposed to do what to who now?' Make sure to save often, it's easy to trip over a scripted battle!
* Imperial China - this scenario is really poignant, but the final confrontation is such a slog (by design, most likely). I, as usual, went with Lei Kugo because otherwise Live A Live does not have a single female protagonist which is a bummer! Lei fucking whips.
* Present Day - the shortest scenario by far, this one is just a series of battles where our fighting game Ryu analog Masaru tries to learn everyone's techniques like he's a Blue Mage of Wrestling. I learned almost all of the techniques (there's a hidden one the game doesn't tell you about) and proceeded to smash my way through the final boss. Why does Masaru not gain any levels, I feel like this really hinders his viability in the Endgame.
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It's more Blaster Master!
I really wish games came with instruction manuals that clued you into new mechanics because there's a completely new counter mechanic in BMZ2 that gets no fanfare and no explanation! Why is Jason twirling around, what does it mean, why am I doing this.
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You can look through this list and see that I'm no stranger to the sinful glut that is the entire ecosystem of 2-D pixel platformers. I played them growing up and continue to play the ones that come out that try to harken back to those days. The good ones, like Blaster Master Zero or Shovel Knight, have interesting mechanics or tight controls and can be challenging, but also know enough about the modern landscape of gaming to update annoying or frustrating mechanics.
It's a shame that Panzer Paladin never got that memo.
There are several mechanics that Panzer Paladin employs that are annoying, but not insurmountable. Having a wide swathe of weapons and all of those weapons be breakable is not a big deal. The pace of getting new weapons, using those up and breaking them to get useful, albeit temporary, abilities, and then acquiring more requires more menu management than I would like, but is ultimately alright. Having to pay attention to the stamina bar so that you don't use a weapon you were intentionally saving some juice in to get the ability is, again, a little annoying but can be fun. Some weapons don't last as long as they ought and it's extremely frustrating when you completely run out, but that's all relatively minor. If you have too many weapons in a stage, you have to fight a miniboss and I don't feel like that mechanic is ever explained or made explicit.
What's less forgivable is having a limited number of lives per stage and then throwing instant death pits and spike traps all over the later stages of the games. The controls can be charitably described as "a little stiff" and missing a jump or getting knocked back into a pit or even just mistiming a move can easily throw you into a pit, sending you back to the beginning of the level (or a checkpoint if you were lucky to hit that point) to do it all over again, where you will inevitably miss that jump again.
It's needlessly punishing for a game that does not warrant it and feels completely out of place, bordering on unfair. I don't mind having instant death pits! Hell, Shovel Knight has them all over the place. Shovel Knight is also *extremely* generous in both its checkpointing and approach to lives. Game Over screens are a leftover of a bygone era that needs to remain bygone.
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Survival horror games have been in a weird place the last few years and I, largely, haven't loved them. I thought the Evil Within was viciously anti-player and I find games like Amnesia, Outlast, Five Nights at Freddys, etc, far too jump-scary to properly enjoy. Y'see, when I sit down to get spooky, I want *vibes* not just constant pants shitting. This is why I can play Resident Evil 2 Remake without any real issues because it's spooky and occasionally some minor jump scares, but something like Resident Evil 7 is actively upsetting.
Signalis seems to understand that and harkens back to classic Playstation 1 era survival horror, complete with crunchy looking graphics, limited ammo, and boss battles that don't quite fit in with the rest of the game but that's okay! It's a good time so far.
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I finished the game in around seven hours and had a blast of a time. I love feeling like the smartest person in the universe when I figure out how a puzzle works and something about the puzzles in Signalis fit just right with how my brain thinks. The graphics melting between this anime-infused 2-D style and 3-D polygons was off-putting in the best of ways and I absolutely loved the bits and pieces of the story we get. I finished with the ending "Memory" but feel satisfied enough with that one. There's apparently a secret ending where you have to dial in a bunch of codes in random rooms and I have no desire to do that, thank you!
If I had one complaint is that the three boss fights are largely "whatever". I actually really enjoyed the second boss since I dropped into the arena completely unprepared but was able to use some Gamer Skills to kite it around the arena once I realized it what was going on. My hot tip for the final boss, since the game does not explain this, is to pick up the spears! They are important and the only thing that does damage, do not waste your time just dumping rifle shots into them like I thought I was supposed to do. I guess we all can't be James Sunderland, blasting our internal trauma into the stratosphere.
I also like to see just how much ammo and health items I have left over at the end of a survival horror game. I'm the player who has like 100 pistol rounds left after the end of Resident Evil, so let's see how I did here. 12 Repair Spray+, 3 Autoinjectors (so I could've healed like 9 times back to full), 52 pistol rounds, 17 revolver, 19 shotgun, 12 rifle, 2 grenades, 22 submachine gun, 4 flares, 4 thermite. Dang.
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I was giving the PC version of this one a shot after enjoying a good bit of it on PS4, but ultimately having to stop because of certain sounds that trigged my tinnitus. It's not something that comes up often, but I do hear a ringing in my ears and certain games have sound effects that cause a piercing sensation like an ice pick is being driven into my eardrum. For instance, in Kirby's Epic Yarn whenever you pick up a gem, the sound effect hurts. I can usually solve this by turning down the volume, but you kinda need the volume for Dishonored, since it's stealth game! And the sound effect was a wooshing, swooshing, vaguely defined sound that I could never identify or predict.
I might not be able to play the PC version because of how severe the head bob is (even on 0!) and the sway of the menus makes me a little sick. Sorry Dishonored 2.
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Interesting in theory, kinda dull in practice, which is wild for a game where you're going around blasting pheromones all over dozens of anime girls desperate for your dick because they're possessed by demons. The shooting doesn't feel great, the mechanic to suck up demons feels bad, and all of the story bits just take a bit too long to get through - you can't even button through them, you have to watch or skip! Pass.
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Specifically, the Advance version (without the sound restoration patch - to my ridiculous brain, I feel like it sounds *worse*).
I have a confession about Final Fantasy VI: It might be my least favorite of the SNES trilogy of Final Fantasy games. I recognize this is a personal failing, but I do have my reasons. And, naturally, least favorite of three of the greatest JRPGs of all time is still a phenomenal game. It's like saying my least favorite of NES Mario games is Mario 2. Technically true, yes, but damn, how many games wish they could say they were Super Mario Bros 2 USA?
Mostly, it's an issue of scope. Final Fantasy VI boasts the biggest cast of characters, but I feel like none of them are especially deep. Each gets a few scenes or a small arc over the course of game, but none of them are as engaging or fulfilling as Cecil in IV or any of the crew in V. This fragmented nature, of anyone can answer the call and be in your party, really upsets any sense of narrative cohesion, resulting in the player just completely missing what should be key, pivotal character moments. IV and V know exactly who is going to be in your party at any time, so it can set up and pay off important character moments. If you don't have Sabin or Edgar in your party in VI, you could just completely miss all of their story. It's a bummer!
I also just find the locked-in nature of all of the characters really exhausting after how much of a breath of fresh air V was - you can make anyone anything, but you can also make each character unique! The class system encourages you to play around, but it also encourages making each character specialize in a certain type of abilities. You could, theoretically do that in VI, but it both takes a while to get to that point (while all of the characters have to live inside their archetype classes) and really feels like the end goal is "have a party of stone cold badasses that can all do everything perfectly" and that's not super fun to me! I like to have my party be a party of individuals, not just Ultima slinging maniacs.
I will say, though, that beyond my own beliefs of what a Final Fantasy should be, and meeting FF6 on its own terms - I do have a good time. I love the way the story just cranks into gear immediately, and I love Terra as a protagonist. I start to flag a little bit around the midpoint of the World of Balance though.
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Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is one of my favorite strategy RPGs of all time, a game that I enjoy quite a bit more than Final Fantasy Tactics (but my heart still belongs to FFT: Advance - maybe the game teenage me put the most time into more than any other combined).
Reborn is an updated version of that with some mechanics changed and a muddier graphical style. I love it, though really wish I could turn off the filter they used for all of the character sprites.
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lol i forgot that the first moral quandary proposed to the character is 'do you wanna murder all of these villagers or not'
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I apparently played all of this when I had COVID over the summer. A hentai game that's actually kinda fun - fairly basic Zelda style combat, probably way too much grinding (all kinds) to really recommend. The thing these two games do well that so many other 'adult' games stumble on is that the sex scenes are almost always a reward for playing well. Since the main character is a succubus, sex is her business, and the sex scenes are generally there to power her up, refill health, earn money, what have you. You don't have to blast the heroine's clothes off (bad), hold a button to 'entice' monsters (gross), or just get hurt enough to see a sex scene (yikes). Controlling well on top of that? Dang, that's almost a fun game you've got there.
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I died of embarrassment because I tried to grab my necktie off of a spinning fan and nearly died when I sat down in an extremely uncomfortable chair. Incredible.
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I need to get these boots off of this dead man. I need them.
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Finished up Disco Elysium and I loved a ton of it. My sad, boring, simultaneously communist and ultraliberal nightmare cop had a hell of a time exploring Revachol. There are a few minor issues here and there (namely I didn't love the inventory system and the Thought Cabinet is interesting, but ultimately didn't lead to changes in gameplay or narration), but I solved the murder, made a friend, and put my life back together. Incredible game.
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I've mentioned previously that while I'm a big fan of the more recent Fallout games, namely 3 and New Vegas (oh god those games are closer to the release of the original Fallout than now aren't they), I really fell off of 4 quickly. And while I love 3 and New Vegas, I also found them to be tremendously buggy games, falling apart and splitting at the seams, sometimes figuratively.
The Outer Worlds has so far been a much more streamlined affair and I've been having a pretty good time! I've set my standards a little lower than New Vegas and it seems to be hitting that mark consistently. There's not a ton of quest depth - do you want to side with the ultra capitalistic corporations or do you want to embrace the freedom of not being an indentured servant. I do appreciate that Obsidian has written characters on all parts of the spectrum and will question your choices (but not directly contradict you) while you make them.
For instance, much has been said about Parvati telling you to not divert power away from the city in the first major quest - there's a lot of good people there, doing this would only hurt them more, Adelaide only wants to see Reed suffer. And hey, Parvati, you make some really good points. You're not wrong, but unfortunately, you're not right and in my truest goblin mode state I wish I could've destroyed the power plant. That would've been the New Vegas option, I feel.
Also, damn, I really do play all of these games the same way. Load up on Science, Hacking, and Talking and try to smooth talk my way out of situations. Just like real life!
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I might start just main questing this one - the combat has not been struggling or interesting since leaving the first planet and while I do enjoy the writing, it's definitely one note screeched across the cosmos. I like all of the party members (and have them all now) but they feel very slight. I probably shouldn't have expected Mass Effect style 'hey go talk to your crew after every major mission' type interactions but that would've been nice! Instead it's just helping them with their one quest or problem and then leaving them alone.
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I scroll up on this list and see I said the phrase "I had considered buying a PS2 memory card with Free McBoot in order to play copies of games over ethernet cables linked between my computer" and, oh, how I wish that had just stayed a simple consideration. I did, in fact, buy a Free McBoot card to try and get everything to work and while, technically, I can theoretically play Xenosaga over a crossover cable connected to my old laptop (that I also had to buy because just plugging in a regular ass ethernet cable never fucking worked!) And that's not counting all of the options and deep dives into my computer's IP addresses and connections that I had to try and finagle to make this process work.
I get it all set up. Every option correctly checked, everything ready to go, and guess what happens? That's right y'all, the cutscenes immediately start skipping and go out of sync. I unplug the cables, go to my desktop computer, and just load an emulator.
I could just play them off of a USB stick (which actually worked well, just kinda slow to load) if need be but I'm just so tired.
But niflhe, says you, the reader and knowledgeable PS2 expert, you can just burn a DVD with the new exploit and play games without any issues. No need for Free McBoot, no need for ethernet cables or USB sticks. As simple as plug and play could be. Let me point you over to my graveyard of about a dozen burned DVDs that didn't work at all! Did I do something wrong, is my laptop DVD burner just messed up? Who knows! I certainly don't!! Fuck this!!!
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Xenosaga is pretty alright. Theatrical and far too melodramatic, but decent. There's apparently a fun save bug that's original to the first game that I have to be careful of where if you try to save at certain points, the game just kicks you back out to the menu! Hope you save stated!
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Honestly, I feel like such a shill for Game Pass because so many of the great games I've played this year is because of the service (and because I was able to get something like three years of Game Pass for pretty cheap).
Chained Echoes is another JRPG in a long lineage of "trying to be Chrono Trigger" but the interesting thing here is that, for the most part, Chained Echoes really succeeds! Gorgeous spritework, an incredible soundtrack, an actually engaging story switching viewpoints between several characters (at least so far, I'm only an hour and change in), and a combat system that lets you build characters how you please, but also has a lot of meter management nuance in combat as well. A resounding success.
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There's a moment in the first act where you're talking to a character and they use an extremely casual, hand brushed script and then erase the entire thing to use a much more hand lettered, biblical script and I cannot describe to you all the ways in which I popped off and have thought about that interaction ever since. I don't care that the murder mystery/ies are a little unfair and force the player character into uncomfortable roles as detectives with no power, and I don't care that the actual running around is a little wonky, these interactions and the way Pentiment portrays religion is nothing short of incredible. What a phenomenal game.
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My first time trying to play Tacoma I somehow managed to set the game to display on a screen that didn't exist, a 'Monitor -1' that made it so I could hear the game but never play it. Tech support for Fullbright never responded, so I deleted the game and didn't think about it until just a week ago.
Gone Home was a revelation, Tacoma is just alright. The company that made it, less so.
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I didn't "get" Vampire Survivors at first blush. 'Oh neat I collect some weapons and items randomly and then die around the ten minute mark'. Once someone told me about weapon combos and upgrading weapons to more powerful versions if you have the right items, that "unlocked" Vampire Survivors for me. I've made enough money in the last few runs to upgrade large swaths of the in-game store and feel like I'm only just scratching the surface.
I'm probably a bit too reliant on the items I like using, though. The upgraded holy water and Bible are so good! NO FUTURE is the best name for an item that doesn't really do much. though it probably works pretty well in more cramped levels. I love upgrading the Fire Wand because of the might bonus from the Spinach. The whip is also there.
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I definitely didn't anticipate spending the last few days of 2022 playing one of the best games ever made, but sometimes a need is a need. I don't know where Resident Evil 4 would fit on a list of my favorite games, but it's definitely in the top 10. What a phenomenal game.
However, I have a confession. All of my time with Resident Evil 4 has been with the Wii edition. Every single time I've played it (and I've played it at least a dozen, plus countless hours in Mercenary mode) has been with the Wiimote in hand, popping off fools like it's nobody's business. Turns out, RE4 is a lot harder when you have to actually use the laser to aim at enemies!
Not *tremendously* harder, mind. I'm facing the second chapter midboss (the Troll) and have only in two areas - one because I was too stubborn to heal and had like three full heals sitting in inventory and to the fish boss because that boss has always been kinda bad!
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RE4 maybe has the highest ratio of "oh fuck, this room* to normal rooms, but I feel like that comes from a lifetime of playing this game and knowing the ins and outs of every combat encounter.
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