It's told in a somewhat comic book fashion narrated at a bar, and they play around with that -- like sending you through a bad route, then having the narrator say "but it would have been foolish for me to go that way ..." and then rewinding the action back.
It gets a little wacky towards the end, which I kind of attribute to the narrator getting drunk - which upon contemplation is a really smart idea that I love.
What it is, I find somewhat less ...
You play as the wind, that plucks a petal from a flower -- and with that petal you fly around clumsily picking up other flowers, which make your flower mass bigger and once you gobble up most of the flowers in the level "discover" another flower, which effectively will be the next level for you to fly around. The world doesn't actually fill with flowers as you might imagine, you are collecting them in order for the grass to grow.
Visually stunning? no. Pretty? ehhhhhhhh. Fun to control the wind? hmmmmm. Recommended? Well ... can you get it for $2?
Return of the Obra Dinn was a refreshing new stylized (1-bit monochromatic) game unlike any I have played before.
You are an investigator looking over a ship and using the clues from moment-in-time scenes to deduce the names and fates of the 60 passengers on a ship in the early 1900's. The sequence of events jumps around in chapters and each section gives you their staged scenes in reverse, so it takes at least a couple watches to get the gist of the story.
It was a big wonderfully fantastic logic puzzle with murderous sea creatures and mutinous crewmen. My only complaint was the difficulty I had in navigating to replay certain scenes to try and gleen further clues, which actually had me give up on figuring out everything - but the story was interesting enough that I read along with the solutions to try and understand it all.
The engine of this game is such a great vehicle for storytelling, and the bar has been set so high recently with some A+ titles out there that I was really looking forward to this.
There are elements of it that are fantastic. The feeling when you are crouch running with some pounding drums and chanting as background while raiding a monastery with your war party are incredible. The story is fairly well done and you have a sense of uniting the kingdoms that you have aided as allies to come to your aid in the final mission (ala Mass Effect).
Where it falls short is in two areas in my opinion. First - like all AC games, there is a point of "over-powered" you can reach that really replaces excitement with a bunch of button mashing. I could have soloed the final fort, and would have preferred it to risking any of my companions.
Second, it lacks that bit of spit and polish that we've come to expect on A+ titles: shopkeeper inventory that makes sense, a ton of minor frustrating bugs like treasure items showing on the map that have already been retrieved, or NPCs with bizarre behaviors.
The one other point of interesting note was that you can choose to play either as Male or Female, and they left all of the potential "romantic interests" in for either gender you choose. There were two options presented to me in the form of a quest that ended up being some sort of ride out to check on the livestock or something, and I remember being a little disappointed - like I was tricked into a mission. I never pursued any of the romantic choices with either partner so I'm wondering if the game assessed my sexuality - as 5(!?) males came onto me on subsequent missions in not-so-subtle ways. Typically the response options were very blunt too -- "Aww yeah" vs. "I just think of you as a friend", so when I was finally presented with a third option that was effectively ignoring the awkward situation - I chose it. When I finished that mission, he pulled me aside and kissed me.
Uhhh ... awkward. Okay.
I'm not sure why every RPG game feels like they need to put in a little bow-chicka-bow-bow ... and the way they did it was just weird and uncomfortable. Stuff like this if included at all should be hidden deep in dialogue trees with at least some specific navigation, sought after instead rather than trying to be avoided.
The game is a series of episodes with you playing both as the Doctor (Matt Smith version) and Amy Pond. They do a great job in playing out mechanically very similar to an episode, but have attempted to gamify things - sending Amy off to collect a few parts that he needs to complete the electro-doohickie while dodging cybermen.
There are 5 episodes total, I love the universe, I'm sure I will probably at some point play them all - but it did start to feel a little bland after the first few episodes. Sneak around and fetch quests.
I confess it was both great and not so much -- great in that I had safety in the comraderie, dying is more fun amongst friends it seems. Not so great in that it was hard to embrace the true character of the game and not try to "summon" the ghost to attack us.
This game plays like the middle of an amazing game. If there was some motivation to the investigation, a body/a desecrated site/a trail of sparkly dust to set you on your path -- that is then paired with what you do at the end of the investigation. Phasmophobia drops the ball at the end in that your goal is merely to discover the type of creature you are hunting. I wanted to acknowledge that it was a banshee, but salt the gravesite to banish it or whatever. Supernatural style.
The art style is actually pretty interesting, your character is a pencil sketch and you are able to run time backwards to do things a different way or start a rotation/move earlier, so it leaves an erased person ghost if you get somewhere you have to backup from.
This game seems to be about finding that Eureka-type moment. Because before you see it - it is frustrating, after you see it - it's simple a matter of execution. Could have probably held my interest if the levels were more interesting and reactive rather than just Escher'ish. If that's a word.
An interesting concept, you have died and are in a limbo where the color is slowly draining from you, and are on a quest to gather and maintain a color garden through meeting a series of ladies who are are in control of their connected areas.
The areas are fairly sparse and ... lonely?, as is the atmosphere. Even though graphically it looks like it should be played on a PS2, the main failing (and reason I wouldn't play further into the story) is the ... slow ... walking ... everywhere. I'm not sure what the save game mechanics were, but after dying I was sent back to the starting area and the idea of spending another 15 minutes walking back was too much.
Apparently people rave about the story though. Maybe I should watch a "let's play"...
You play as a mother badger with 5 cubs that you must escort through treacherous environments while keeping them well fed.
Cub #1 died in the second area when I didn't realize they all had to stay within the light circle I generated.
Cub #2 died to an eagle swoop
Cub #3 drowned when travelling upstream
Cub #4 eagle again after being forced to run from fire
Mama on last open stretch to the final shelter, leaving cub #5 to start the cycle anew.
Was not a bad game but not that fun. I wasn't emotionally connected to the children the way I thought I would be.
I didn't look long through upcoming games, I just looked through the ones that were already on my wish list and on super sale:
Jazzpunk: Director's Cut (28/100) is a bizarre little art piece of a game. You are sent on mind bending Easter egg laden detective adventures fraught full of puns.
This is the kind of game you play in the same way you will stand in a t-shirt shop and read every design. There is some clever little goofiness, worth a couple hours.
Graphically unremarkable button masher with the opportunity for a bunch of recycled super-hero quips and tropes? MMmmmmhmmm .. first of all no, second -- all servers have been offline since November 2017.
In a sentence - a key finding puzzle game with annoying obstacles (zombies) that has you cutting open a skin flaps with scissors.
The mapping system was tough to figure out, I oftentimes found myself turned around and had to repeatedly check the map for my directions. Being that I never got off the apartment floor I started on, it should not have been that tough.
There is also the elephant in the room about a pixel art based horror game that needs to be mentioned. There was a room I walked in that was supposed to be a bathroom covered in blood and gore. I had no idea what room it even was really except for it saying "examine bathtub" with the feedback "oh the horror of what must have happened here" (paraphrasing). On a "oh the horror" scale, I'd give this a 2 for the couple hours I played.
The first is about the space boy, Shay, who couldn't grow up. Coddled by a "mom" spaceship, this young adult is impossibly bored fake hero missions like rescuing crochet creatures from an avalanche of ice-cream, and eventually sees through the farce.
The second is about a girl, Vella, who is one of a few offerings to be sacrificed to an ancient god named Mog Chothra at the Maiden's Feast but ends up breaking free and destroying it.
Spoilers, the ancient god(s) are actually the spaceships and the entire enterprise is being controlled by a super-race that are harvesting girls for their DNA because they have over purified their own genetically. Shay is one of many of these that go to collect the young girls, the illusion of travelling in space and rescuing colonists is maintained so these harvesters don't "go native".
Pretty fun for a point and click, but it did have those moments of linear path blocking. I missed a peach I was supposed to pick off a tree and ended up walking around trying stupid combinations everywhere else even though I knew a peach was the answer.
You play as someone who ... crashlanded? anyways, you need to gather 15 parts for your ship to get it working again, while aristocratic hunting robots patrol the grounds.
There was no introductory level or tutorial, just the school of hard knocks in learning how to distract robots and what things were edible. They make allusions to weapons you can find, but I never noticed any so most of the time I played was creeping around slowly --- setting up an alarm clock on a 60 second timer, then positioning myself to a dash and grab.
There is also an annoying amount of "junk" inventory with no way to sell it. 90% of the items end up being junk - and yet there is a "take all" button.
I forced myself to play for a few hours tonight, enough to get a feel for the game at least. The menace this time is a hillbilly family that has been making their own zombies, referring to something/someone as giving "the gift". Apparently this gift is immortality and cannibalism, and you definitely have it since your hand cut off with a chainsaw -- then was stapled back on and you can still use it.
Interaction was similar to Remothered, being hunted while I wandered a house looking for keys and such, making it to a place teeming with gangly oil slick type zombies in some narrow corridors. In typical Resident Evil fashion there is always just a too few bullets, but it also felt like killing zombies was a health bar related thing and not a skilled headshot other than causing more damage as a headshot.
With oil slick zombies - you can't really tell how much you've damaged them either...
It does not follow anything of the book stories, and is instead a precursor to the tales. It does contain references to some book/series characters, Mormont is Captain of the Watch with Master Aemmon. I didn't play too far into it to see where else it takes you.
The combat was pretty clunky for what I did of it, and I likely won't play more - I am intrigued at how GoT'ish the story will be, after all - it does start out with you beheading someone who was apparently your friend. It didn't work for me, it painted your character as an emotionless ass - and I'm not prepared to suffer the janky old game mechanics and graphics for this kind of edgy.
Plus going by what we know of GoT the series, even if the game is great, there is high chance the very last bit of it will suck so bad you'll end up hating the entire thing.
To be fair - I have played less than an hour total, but I'm not feeling compelled to play more. I want to get current with my list and there are better titles to spend time with, I'm ready to roll random again!
