Thirsty Suitors is an incredibly charming game with a strong emotional core brought down by its boring turn-based combat and some pacing issues. Admittedly, the combat has a fun thematic framing but on the gameplay side of things it feels really flat and uninteresting from the third fight onwards. The skateboarding is more interesting, though I found the controls a little too clunky to really enjoy it. But: I loved how overly expressive every animation was, how each of the boss fights had their own visual theme and accompanying soundtrack how the game portrays its themes of intergenerational trauma and the complexities of interpersonal relationships within marginalized communities and how much joy the game still evokes while tackling these themes. Those elements is what I'll be remember this game by, I think. And those memories will be fond ones.

Still raw in the middle.

Backpack Hero is a game that is immensely fun for the first couple of hours. Make no mistake, it’s still far from a game of the year contender even at its highest peaks, but it’s still managed to nail down an incredibly addictive gameplay loop that managed to sap about five hours of my time in what felt like one. There's an obscene amount of promise in these early stages, just as everything is starting to open up to you, and it really seemed like it was going to be solid for the entire runtime.

It’s regrettable, then, that the remaining ten hours I’ve spent with it have been little but tedious retreads, the game long having since run out of fresh things to show me. I’d estimate I’ve got at least another ten hours before I can finish the story mode, and I really don’t feel like putting too much more effort into trying for it. Backpack Hero doesn’t have long enough legs.

The two main factors I’d blame for how rapidly stale the game gets as it goes along come down to repetitious grinding and a total lack of challenge. Backpack Hero offers what would theoretically be dozens of builds — shurikens, gemstones, fish, magic wands and staves — but nothing is as anywhere near as effective as passively tanking up with shoe hats and leather caps and finding any weapon that does eight or more damage per energy. The most viable builds all share the exact same core of gaining dozens of armor on your first turn; after that, you can choose to deal a whole bunch of damage at once, or you can choose to apply statuses that deal damage over time. The best weapons can do both, and it’s exceptionally easy to forge a sword that hits for 11 and applies four poison with every swing while you’re still on the second of nine floors. There’s no incentive whatsoever to go for anything other than a tank-physical damage or tank-damage status playstyle: magic items require mana, which requires committing to manastones, which each take up a bag slot; Satchel’s lutes and triangles are such ridiculously strong status-appliers that you can throw away your starting weapons and spam your shield while passively building charm; Pochette’s minions deal damage for her, so she can just sit up front and click on her shield for the half hour it takes to complete a run.

This is probably the easiest roguelite I’ve ever played. In addition to being the most obviously powerful way to play the game, tank-physical damage (read: sword and board) builds are so easy to set up that you have to intentionally go out of your way not to play them. Passive armor and small-but-powerful shields are everywhere, mostly stepping on each others toes with incredibly minor trade-offs between them (one shield takes up two spaces and gives eight block; another takes up two spaces and gives seven, but also gives an additional passive block for every adjacent piece of armor), so you’re never going to be at a point where you’re left without obscene damage and obscene block outside of the starting one or two fights where you still have default gear. I only ever died once in fifteen hours to a starting fight that was literally impossible to win due to how bad my initial items were relative to how quickly the enemies scaled up against them. The run may as well end the second that you get to the stairs going to the second floor, because there won’t be anything further down that’ll even have a chance to kill you. The ninth-floor boss is universally easier to clear than the first floor introductory fight.

The town building mechanics between runs is almost universally reviled, and with good reason; it’s shallow, and it quickly falls out of importance in exchange for how much micro-management it asks of the player. Realistically, the best way to handle it is to just plop down houses and farms far away in the distance, and build every single shop as close as you can to the path leading back to the dungeon so that you don’t need to walk too far to get your upgrades. Resources for new unlocks are tight in the early stages of the game, but you’ll be completely overflowing with food and construction and treasure to the point that you literally won’t be able to spend it all unless you’re really dying to set up non-crate decorations around town. Putting up building-appropriate decorations increases the “efficiency” of said buildings, which seems to do nothing besides lower the resource costs for the upgrades of that particular building. Directly unlocking the upgrades without the discount requires spending the exact same resources. You’re better off skipping the extra step and just buying the unlocks at MSRP. I’m sure they look nice, but you’re not going to be spending more than a couple minutes in town for every half hour you spend in the dungeon. The decorations are barely useful mechanically, and you aren’t in town often enough to appreciate them visually. It’s a very messy, tacked-on idea that serves only to pad out an already incredibly-padded story mode.

What broke my will, though, was trying to unlock the character Tote. Tote won’t join you unless you carry her totem through six floors of the dungeon and two boss fights, and her totem takes up a slot. Hardly a problem after the first two fights, since you'll have more than enough backpack space for it by then, but it means you’ll be giving up at least one of Purse’s starting items and a bonus boon from Matthew to fit it into your 3x3 starting backpack. Regardless, I got to the bottom of the swamp, showed Tote the totem, beat the fucking tar out of her, and then finished the run. When I got back to town, there was no Tote. I went back into the dungeon, saw that her totem was still there, figured I hadn’t met some condition to unlock her yet, and went back to the swamp. No Tote. Finished the run, went back in, carried the totem to the bottom, still no Tote. I did the exact same run to the end of the swamp with my other two characters, and there still wasn’t any sign of Tote. I looked it up to see if I was missing something, and the closest thing I could find to an answer was a group of people in the Steam forums who said that Tote showing up at all was a random occurrence, and that it took one of them twenty runs before he could recruit Tote. I'd like to remind you here that the average run lasts about twenty to thirty minutes. Even so, I had already met Tote, and I had already fought Tote, and Tote had already agreed to join me, so I think the game just bugged out and didn’t give her to me when it should have. Normally I wouldn’t care about not being able to play a new character — Tote is apparently pretty bad relative to the rest of the cast, anyway — but you need to clear all nine floors with every character in order to actually beat story mode. No Tote means no ending. It seems like my best course of action would be to delete my fifteen-hour save and start from scratch in the hopes that it doesn’t happen again and she actually gets unlocked when she’s supposed to.

No thanks. I’m good.

This is one more game that’s out of early access purely by technicality.

On the surface, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX appears to be a pretty faithful remake of the original Blue and Red Rescue Team. It’s the same turn-based dungeon-crawler roguelike Pokemon battling translation that I had grew up with almost two decades ago, coupled with the same storyline and a rearranged orchestral version of the original’s DS soundtrack. Minus the lack of walkable Friend Areas, DX’s atmosphere and core gameplay mechanics seemed accurate to my previous experience of the original games at first, and thus it seemed like a forgone conclusion that I’d naturally enjoy the remake. However, the more I played through the game, the more things felt off.

Further investigation into DX’s inner workings revealed that while DX preserves the core formula of Blue Rescue Team’s structure and basic combat mechanics, much of the surrounding survival mechanics have actually been pulled from the latest iteration of PMD via Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon on the 3DS to “modernize” the mechanics as opposed to adapting mechanics from the original games in Red/Blue Rescue Team or the DS successors in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. I started noticing that in DX, the hunger mechanic felt much more prevalent; my Pokemon’s belly appeared to empty much more quickly than in the originals, and I found myself consuming an Apple every few minutes or so. There’s a variety of changes that contribute to this: the belly decreases by 1/7 of a point every action (instead of 1/10 for Blue and EoS), Max Ethers/Elixirs no longer restore BP, consuming berries & seeds only restore 2 BP as opposed to 5 in the originals, and so on. Similarly, Power Point (PP) management regarding move usage limits became far more grating in DX as opposed to the original. The obvious culprit is removing the standard attack that could be used at any time for a weaker strike that preserved PP (meaning players now have to utilize moves far more often), but to compensate for this, Spike Chunsoft had to supply the player with far more PP restoration items. However, instead of supplying them with Max Elixirs that fully restore PP for all moves used, the most common PP restoration item is now the Max Ether, which only restores PP for a single move. The optimal strategy then, is to spam the same move over and over again so you get the most bang for your buck out of using Max Ethers. Finally, weather feels much more intrusive in the remake as opposed to the originals, because DX removes the ability to naturally heal HP over time during sandstorms/hail if you’re not of a resistant type, meaning that you have to either pack a lot more Oran Berries or waste more time outside of damaging weather to heal up.

None of these changes would feel too problematic in isolation, but together, this results in DX overemphasizing its resource management in comparison to Blue Rescue Team or Explorers of Sky, meaning that overloading your toolbox with the necessary buffers or grinding in easier dungeons to stock up on said buffers is pretty much a given to succeed (especially when Apple/Sticky Traps in dungeons can further spoil your resources). I unfortunately find this shift in focus somewhat ill-fitting to a remake of Blue Rescue Team; while the structure and core gameplay remained the same, the circumstances dictating how the player had to interact with the structure changed, and thus it feels to me like the remake struggled to serve its intended purpose. Needless to say, I’m far more interested in the turn-based combat than the resource management of PMD, and DX felt far more imbalanced to where I felt like I was spending most of my time watching my health/PP/belly and menuing rather than focusing on the play-by-play.

In a broader sense, I’ve said before that Pokemon’s greatest weakness is the presence of excessive RNG and grinding. That’s not to say that these weaknesses were absent from PMD, but rather, PMD often prevailed in the face of bullshit RNG and grinding because of how the game’s structure and gameplay mechanics leaned into them. Once again though, for a remake that seemed faithful on the outside, DX regrettably makes changes that worsen the RNG and grinding to extents that were not necessarily present in the originals.

I’ll come right out and say that I’m not a fan of DX’s changes regarding team size and recruitment. Blue Rescue Team and EoS kept the max party size to four Pokemon at a time (with Blue only letting you bring in three Pokemon at a time while EoS let you bring four; if you wanted a fourth in Blue, it had to be recruited in the dungeon), but DX has a max party size of up to eight Pokemon despite only letting you bring in three recruited members. The short and thick of it is that these recruits are a necessary liability for successful runs. They’re a liability because you have to bring them back through the end of the dungeon run to permanently recruit them on your team (unlike the originals, which let you send them back immediately to base), but keeping them alive will naturally eat into your resources, and letting them faint once they’ve been temporarily recruited as a guest will cause enemy Pokemon to become “awakened” and pose an immediate threat via significant stat increases. It’s also extremely unwieldy to try and micromanage five guests at the same time, especially when you can’t give guest Pokemon exact move commands or control their tactics, and you’ll often find them getting attacked at the end of a single-file line in corridors, unable to lend a helping hand to fend off enemy ambushes. At the same time, these guests can be absolute godsends to runs: they often come with Rare Qualities that affect the entire team, such as Small Stomach (which lets you consume any seed/berry/apple and immediately fills the belly to max capacity) or Strike Back (which lowers the Attack and Special Attack stats of an enemy Pokemon, including bosses, that deals damage to your team). You can’t see what rare qualities an enemy Pokemon may have while fighting them, so it’s in your best interest to recruit as many guests as possible in hopes of getting more Rare Qualities to bolster your team. Essentially, this is yet another resource grind that’s present only in the remake. At best, getting the Rare Quality recruits you need is extremely time-consuming and luck-based, but at least lets you steamroll boss fights. At worst, not getting the Rare Quality recruits you need feels like an active detriment when you’re running low on supplies and the dungeon isn’t giving you the item drops you need to survive.

Perhaps this resource grind would be more forgivable if the level scaling were up to par, but as it stands, I find enemy XP drops during the main game to be rather lacking. You’ll have to stick around and roam entire floors to sufficiently scale up with the enemy Pokemon level increases as the story progresses, and that’s often not the best idea when you’ve only got limited resources in your toolbox to manage HP/PP/BP and you’ll likely end up spotting the stairs before mapping out the entire floor. The best way then, is to train in Makuhita Dojo. This too, has been drastically altered from the original. Instead of challenge-room type and boss mazes, the dojo has been repurposed into a straight XP grindfest. You now have to spend limited tickets to defeat as many enemy Pokemon as you can in a real-time limit (i.e. a Bronze Dojo Ticket gives you 50 seconds of real time), and because experience is significantly multiplied both by the ticket itself (3x for Bronze, 5x for Silver, 7x for Gold) and by using super effective attacks, it’s simply too good to pass up considering the meager XP earnings from story dungeons. Unfortunately, this is also extremely tedious due to the time limits, as excess animations from randomly doubling attacks or outright missing attacks/failing to OHKO from random enemy buffs feels particularly punishing when Dojo tickets are a limited commodity that have to be scored as job rewards or randomly from dungeon treasure chests/mail. It also doesn’t help that the ticket allocation itself is not scaled: you’ll still be receiving Bronze tickets far into the post-game when you’ll likely need to use up 3 or more tickets to level-up, and you can only use one ticket at a time instead of stacking time limits. The result then, is that Makuhita’s dojo outright breaks the difficulty curve of the game: I found myself significantly overleveled during the main story using it, but after the significant difficulty spike during the post-game, it failed to provide much benefit for my main team since I was inundated with Bronze/Silver tickets and thus led to even more time spent grinding both in and outside of dungeons.

Gummis have also been reworked in DX, and are a slight improvement over the original, yet aren't completely rectified. Gummi grinding was likely the weakest aspect of the original games: you needed them to level up the IQ of each individual Pokemon for basic skills such as not stepping on visible traps and not using status moves on Pokemon that have already been statused. Fortunately, these IQ skills have been entirely removed and as a result the AI has been improved significantly: you no longer have to micromanage every single member of your team to avoid making silly mistakes, and in fact teammates can aid you subtly like positioning themselves to target ranged enemies or deviating slightly from the path to pick up floor objects so the leader doesn’t have to pick up every object themselves. That said, gummies still serve a purpose, because they provide random permanent stat boosts (invaluable when level-ups are often just a simple +1 to all stats) and they’re the only way to add/change Rare Qualities attached to your team members. Obtaining gummis is actually more obnoxious than even the original games, because just like Dojo Tickets, they can only be obtained via job rewards or found randomly in treasure chests, and you’ll often need to run through a few just to get the right Rare Quality for a specific team member (or a Rare Quality at all, because Rainbow Gummis are not guaranteed to give a Rare Quality). At least in the original games, you could obtain Gummis as random item drops on dungeon floors.

The above three changes basically represent a trend of changing aspects from the original in a way that left something to be desired, and lead me to believe that the remake is somewhat misguided. It’s quite confusing: sometimes there are obvious improvements, like expanding the toolbox capacity from 20 to 48 (carrying this from Explorers of Time/Darkness forward) and adding in all evolution lines for Pokemon from Generations 1-3 + bringing in new moves that have been added since Gen 8, but then sometimes the game feels far more punishing than difficult in a way that the original never did, like how fainting in dungeons now makes you lose all of your money and items (whereas you’d only lose half of your items in the DS originals and at least in EoS, only lose half of your money), so you really better hope you’ve got the resources to rescue yourself with a second team or someone online spots your request promptly.

What is more damning though, is that for as many things as they did change, there’s a lot of not great things about the original that I’d argue they should have changed/improved upon but didn’t (or at the very least, didn't improve upon enough), such as the aforementioned issue of gummi grinding Ironically, the qualities left in from the original are what led me to realize that Blue/Red Rescue Team are more flawed than I had originally remembered. For example, the original wasn’t great at pacing either (I found myself equally bored in the main-game at times, forced to grind during one particular story-heavy section where I was limited to my protagonist + partner), but I think it was more forgivable at the time given that it was the debut of the series and was greatly improved upon in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. DX feels far more egregious in context now that I have several points of comparison, for not fixing a lot of the grinding/RNG issues of the original (and in fact exacerbating a few of them) and transitioning the at-least involved main-story into an underwhelming post-game narrative, of which 80% can be summed up as “fight this powerful Pokemon because you can.” Take this with a grain of salt since my point of view is colored from extensively playing the original (albeit, almost a decade and a half ago), but I unfortunately found my time spent during the main story to be quite forgettable (as I breezed through the dungeons with little difficulty) and a good chunk of the post-game to be aggravatingly tedious while I scaled up my team to better deal with the far more competent foes and spongier bosses.

I suppose I did eventually come around on the post-game nevertheless, considering that at the time of writing I’ve now logged just over sixty hours on my save file. It’s a pity that it took hours of forgettable missions and grinding (instead of the game adequately scaling my gains throughout the story’s runtime) to get to that point and that my satisfaction was in spite of rather than as a result of the altered resource management (since these elements become minimal once you have the right Rare Qualities and a stockpile of Perfect Apples/Max Elixirs to throw at the problem), but a few of the game’s climatic dungeons really do bring out the best qualities of PMD’s gameplay. One dungeon that stands out is Meteor Cave: in it, you are constantly assaulted by infinite waves of different Deoxys forms that force you to consider the totality of your actions, considering each form has significantly stratified stats/moves that must be dealt with promptly before you run out of resources due to Pressure doubling your PP usage. In just twenty floors, this dungeon where you cannot be rescued challenged me in ways that Silver Trench couldn’t do in ninety-nine. This isn’t even my favorite dungeon in the game though: surprisingly, that title goes to Purity Forest. Considered by many to be the toughest dungeon in the game, Purity Forest drops you in with no items, no Poke, and only one team member, resetting your level to five and forcing you to fight and earn your way out to even hope to survive against fully evolved Pokemon by the end of your run. The caveat to my final hours savored in the game was that I had to slog through multiple other ninety-nine floor dungeons around the same time as tackling Purity Forest (and it doesn’t help that two of them, Wish Cave and Joyous Tower, are basically Purity Forest Jr since the only differences are that Wish Cave lets you bring items + teammates and Joyous Tower only lets you bring teammates), but ultimately, I can at least say I finished my run on a high note, even if I felt like my run was diluted somewhat by the lackluster pacing and never quite hit the perfect difficulty until the very end.

So the big question remains: do I recommend Rescue Team DX? While I ultimately got some enjoyment out of the game, I'm conflicted regarding its overall quality and lean towards no. All things considered, I don’t really know what audience this game appeals to or if it even excels in any particular category. Newbies will likely find this game too hard and too grindy during the main story, while veterans will likely find this game initially too easy and too grindy during the post-game. DX introduces enough quality-of-life changes, but it also doesn’t change certain exasperating elements from the original (or in some cases, outright fumbles the bag) and makes me question if the remake was necessary in the first place. The climactic gameplay, once the player gets past any resource and leveling barriers, is fantastic, but as I’ve mentioned earlier, is dragged down by a layer of RNG and grinding that often feels more tedious than challenging. Finally, I'd say that the story’s adequate given its time, but it can’t hold a candle to the emotional peaks reached by Explorers of Sky (due in part to Sky’s side stories).

If anything, my time with DX has confirmed that I see modern Pokemon games far differently than I once did as a kid. Obvious statements aside, I find that I tend to view the newer Pokemon games (of the ones I’ve played anyways, as I only have a few hours in Sword/Shield and haven’t touched Scarlet/Violet) more as sandboxes than well-rounded experiences. Granted, it might be a little unfair to assign this to a remake of a 2005 DS/GBA game, and it doesn’t even sound like a significant issue at first given that I’m usually able to dig deep and find the player motivation to thoroughly approach games on their own terms. That said, I would also say that there was once a time where Pokemon games excelled in both world-building/atmosphere and gameplay (Explorers of Sky being the obvious candidate), and as such it’s hard to see DX as anything but a personal disappointment at best. Even so, it might not be my ideal experience, but I’m still glad that others were able to fully savor what DX brings to the table even if I’m stuck in the past reminiscing about the glory days of PMD, and that’s okay too.

my laptop is literally so dinky that I had to play this in the lowest resolution available which tbh w the wavy and v colorful graphics and vhs filter improved on the games aesthetic and overall feel. felt like how it was supposed to be played.

feel like the artist most comparable to doseone and vellman’s vibe and worldview is late career korine. like his work post spring breakers, dior commercials and all. undeniably corporate and clean while still holding on to some form of street cred/punk outlook. more or less a parodies of the modern world and all of its problems but one that treats all of its characters and their problems w love and affection, totally sincere and serious despite the playful tone. everything is so heightened, james franco playing everytime by britney on the piano while teenage girls holding guns surround him and a projectionist saying the state of cinema is a repeating violent gif of a doberman w a gun is the exact same vibe and outlook on the world. good shit, looking forward to the next doseone/vellman game and also aggro drift !!

I made a list a few days ago inspired by this game, where I tried to collect my favourite instances of non narrative based games with good/enjoyable writing. I absolutely adore the flavour text in medieval 2, the barks when clicking units, the battle narrator, they are all so infused with earnestness and the vibes the game is trying to convey I have a goofy smile when Im playing this game the whole way through.

It's not just that every single unit of the game be it agents, generals, army and navy units etc have numerous voice lines all in mostly appropriate national accents and dispositions based on their personality and relationship with your leader ; which is great of course, but its also that in conjunction with the games' trait system.

Checking out an enemy spanish general with high chivalry : "We seek an honourable engagement"
Sending your diplomat as an egyptian faction to negotiate a peace treaty : "Of course, mighty sultan".
These are small things, but small things are what life and game design is about a lot of the time. Slightly modified from Rome Total War, every general has 4 skills and several traits based on their actions, their upbringing (i.e if their dad was a god of the battlefield they are more likely to start out as a decent commander) and some random chance. I love the flavour text for each of the skill levels, just like every other bit of text in this game its so fun. One of the traits is chivalry/dread. Basically how noble the character is. High Chivalry gives you buffs to morale and High Dread debuffs to enemy morale, which even out so you want to have high one or the other instead of trying to be in the middle.

I had my faction leader slowly become more and more dreaded which made battles easier but also made me so invested in him, like I was almost roleplaying an evil tyrannical ruler. Eventually he got the epithet "the malevolent" and that was so funny to me, like yeah Sultan Miswar the Malevolent, woe betide he who forgets his name. "A Man so malevolent he considers honour and virtue foolish weaknesses". Still not quite as good as "A stuffed olive has more importance than this man - it could choke someone important and change history." for minimum influence characters in rome 1.

It's funny, for a long time I considered Shogun 2 the more solid game, and to a certain extent that is true, though more accurately its the more streamlined game. See, future total war games did away with these traits (though I havent played any other future games other than three kingdoms after rome 2) and simply had a standard sort of upgrade tree. This is "better" design by conventional standards but there is a charm that it lacks in my view.

Whilst having high chivalry and high dread are similar in its battle effects, high chivalry is preferrable because it leads to higher population growth in cities which is really important. The key is that whilst a lot of the traits have various levels of randomness and predictability (a general who's stuck in the boonies doing nothing will get pretty poor traits generally, whereas if you put one to oversee a city with a big mining complex it might gain "mining knowledge" etc) the actions for chivalry and dread are almost entirely the result of the player. Unlike Rome 1, enemies are captured when defeated during a rout, meaning after each battle one may choose to either ransom them for money (neutral, but if rejected you will have to execute them), release them (good obviously but can you afford to keep letting the enemy go?) and execute them all (bad, but you are rid of them). Similarly one of the strongest units in medieval 2 is your own general's cavalry bodyguard, which in rome 1 could be used to singlehandedly win battles through cycle charging. However constantly doing this in Medieval 2 will lead to "winning first" which gives more dread to your general, incentivising you to "fight honourably" to get those bonuses.

So it leads to a nice mix of roleplaying and decision making on whether or not to be ruthless and efficient or saintly and risk having to work twice as hard. Similarly the semi randomness of the other traits imo reach a nice balance between keeping you on your toes, not relying entirely upon one guy who will turn out to become a drunkard. Now, this system bears some resemblance to both the chaos system of Dishonored and the general traits systems of games like darkest dungeon, but why is it then that I hate the former and wouldnt touch the latter because I know I would also hate it? Well, for one thing its the intensity of it. Medieval 2 is not exactly a challenging game so being fucked by the algorithm or accidentally letting your idiot son become an asshole by leaving him in some backwater town doesn't feel soul crushing. The other being, in relation to something like dishonored, that it feels to me as an actual choice to play the game in one of two ways rather than the game throwing a fit that Im using the tools it keeps giving me. Also that I actually enjoy M2TW and hate stealth games generally.

Also inherited from rome total war is a nice system wherein a trait is initially positive but if let progress becomes negative. For e.g in Rome 1 a general could get the trait social drinker, +1 command. Essentially having a healthy appreciation for booze made him more liked by his men, but could eventually become day drinker - 1 command or even drunkard - 2 command etc. Lots of traits follow this model and I quite enjoy its implementation, even if its hard to avoid the traits progressing into the negative side eventually.

There is a lot more that could be said about M2TW, its historical accuracy is far from perfect but much better than "ptolemaic egypt having a bronze age army with motherfucking chariots" - Rome Total War 1. The interactions with religion are interesting, like how European countries are constantly being threatened with excommunication for fighting each other by the pope who will call crusades to try to unify them into spreading the faith whereas as a muslim country as long as you have a high faith imam you can call a holy war whenever (except if one has already been called recently), which is a nice reflection of the centralization and lack thereof of the two religions respectively.

Like in Rome 1 you might as well only ever recruit troops in one city or two to maximize bonuses and the retraining and various troop types are kind of an ass even if I get their function in slowing down conquest when moving into less developed territory.

Anyways, for the most part I really just want to again highlight the writing which is my biggest source of joy playing this game. I love the battle advisor, some of thse lines go so hard : (muslim battle advisor) "All praise to allah! This is a most crushing victory! Your name will live in marble and our foes' in sand!" (mediterranean battle advisor) "We are blessed! The enemy general is dead! We have sent the idiot to hell" "Our King has run from the field! I pray victory does not run after him, may the Lord have mercy on his soul". Etc etc.

Just goes to show, good writing is always good to have even if your games' story is going to be almost entirely told through emergent gameplay and player actions.

Overall, a pleasant experience despite some pacing issues and underutilized mechanics. Jusant basically fits every trope of the Journey-like (a solo pilgrimage from point A to B to C, heavy focus on atmospheric exploration with some environmental puzzles, rediscovering an abandoned/forgotten civilization, etc), but what separates it from most typical copycats is that the main moment-to-moment gameplay is actually pretty engaging this time around! The obvious example here is how the game forces you to tightly grip your controller’s triggers to climb and hang onto ledges for dear life, but most actions in-between such as placing pinons/swinging back and forth with your grapple/jumping across and between ledges keep the interaction flowing smoothly. Interestingly, I would say Jusant’s problem is also opposite to that of most Journey-likes, because it handles its micro well enough, but falters a bit in its execution of the macro. If I were to compare the climbing to say, that of Shadow of the Colossus, then the difference in sense of scale becomes more readily apparent. Shadow of the Colossus takes places in mostly connected and open environments (with a few in vast caverns), but a good chunk of Jusant’s climbing takes place indoors in often cramped spaces that left me wishing there was an FOV slider to compensate for the often uncomfortably close camera getting stuck on walls. I do think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity that Jusant didn’t get any opportunities to showcase its world in its entirety and instead cut off each area into its own isolated level. A part of me was hoping that it would execute this as a sort of mirror to Journey; whereas Journey tries to keep the final shining summit in view at all times outside to remind the player of their final destination, I think Jusant could have combined all the outside areas and given the player the opportunity to look back from increasing heights to remind themselves of just how far they’ve come.

Getting back to macro vs micro, I have a few quibbles and suggestions in regards to improving the overall pacing, as there were some elements that felt like occasional stumbling blocks. The environments are sometimes difficult to read (especially in indoor settings) because climbable rocks/edges often look similarly shaded to their non-interactable surroundings, which resulted in me getting lost a few times. The in-game guide (“Listen” via pressing right on the d-pad) could be improved in this aspect, since it gives you a general direction to move towards but doesn’t solve the issue of figuring out what background object is required to ascend. Speaking of background objects, the environments are often littered with so many differently-colored materials, which contributes to the above problem of figuring out the way forward and also makes the task of searching for collectibles more annoying unless you’re just focusing on the context-sensitive prompts. I sadly also have to agree with others here that the lore dumps via the letters/diary entries didn’t do much for me (resulting in a narrative that I mostly ignored), and I would have preferred emptying the surroundings somewhat to better establish a feeling of presence with a heavier emphasis on environmental storytelling. In addition, removing these excess objects would reduce the amount of 3D polygonal jank present in the game: I often found myself suddenly stagnating and getting stuck on the floor from bumpy geometry, and the same rung true while climbing because I once had to restart from the last checkpoint after getting trapped by some nearby vines.

I’m going to nitpick the climbing as well and concur regarding the lack of tension, as the game never forced me to fully leverage my capabilities: again, this is a key detail that separates this game’s climbing from the heights reached by Shadow of the Colossus. The game could have leaned more into tight timing segments that forced the player to quickly scale ledges before they crumbled; this is briefly explored in Chapter 3 with the sunlight burning off plant roots, but then gets replaced with more calculated climbing for the rest of the game. Similarly, the pinons feel underutilized: I can’t recall any instance where I felt obligated to place down more than one pinon at a time while climbing, and that was often due to needing the ability to swing back and forth rather than using it as a safety net. A possible solution here is reworking the resting mechanic so that it could only be used at a pinon: this would also solve the pacing issue of having to constantly pause to regain stamina, and force the player to more carefully place pinons to make the most out of the stamina gauge's capacity. Finally, I was surprised that I couldn’t alter the amount of slack/tension in the rope while climbing and hanging onto ledges. This ability would allow the player additional control over jumps and climbing capacity without needing to expend a pinon (since I rarely ever reached the full rope length as is), which in turn would give the player more freedom to create shortcuts by letting them go for riskier maneuvers that the restrictive mechanics would prohibit otherwise.

There’s a lot of room for improvement, but I nevertheless appreciate that Jusant doesn’t overstay its welcome. Despite being a bit rough around the edges, the core gameplay is a nice change of pace from its peers, and it further distinguishes itself from its competition with its restrained ending. Instead of going for a bombastic “victory-lap” finale, Jusant has the modesty to bring itself back to earth with a no frills back-to-basics climbing segment devoid of the previous level gimmicks and clutter. That's the game in a nutshell: it might not push the envelope of the medium, but it accomplishes its premise in the time given with solid peaks despite some shaky consistency. In a genre full of misguided and uncompelling carbon copies, I’ll gladly take it.

In Other Waters knows how to play to its strengths. Being a solo developed game about exploring a vast alien ocean the design had to be clever about its inherent limitations, which have been convincingly turned into strengths. The story is told from the perspective of an absolutely crisp minimalistic UI, in-Universe its the OS of a diving suit which has seemingly become sentient. Through the use of symbols and experimentation you must quickly work out how to work this unfamiliar dashboard without a manual in order to guide a researcher to safety.

I guess I should say, In Other Waters is a game about discovery and is best gone into blind, so whilst I won't spoil the plot specifics I will discuss game mechanics, so maybe you should go and play it before coming back (its currently 70% on steam and while its not perfect I definitely think its worth the 5 dollars its listed at)

I say it plays to its strengths because being viewed entirely through a topographic radar view of the ocean with select text blurbs describing the fantastical biodiversity of the planet it leaves a lot to the imagination, leaving your mind to picture these creatures. A very clever way to make a solo developer able to build a world which would be impossible to actually construct without either massive proc gen or a dev cycle measured in decades. Even more clever, completing the entry for a species reveals the researcher's sketch of it, rewarding exploration with being able to see a snapshot of the creatures.

Similarly the gorgeous UI and mild postprocessing colour filters to separate the feel of various areas like 8bit rpgs used to do (pokemon springs to mind) really do a lot with very little. Same can be said about the impecabble sound design which does a lot of the heavy lifting of the great atmosphere the game has going.

One of In Other Waters' failings is that it never really leans into the interface learning aspect. Figuring out the various functions of the suit are satisfying but pretty simple, and later additions are just straight up told to you. To the game's credit I don't think there was ever an obnoxious "use the fucking blowtorch dumbass" moment and the dialogue frequency strikes a nice balance of downtime/atmospheric silence and plot development.

The other wrinkle to the game are the various environmental hazards, managing oxygen and power as you explore various environments with several roadblocks. As you take samples of local plant and animal matter as well as take scans of the wildlife the base's entries get filled in progressively. There is however a limited inventory of samples which not only furthers the research back in base, but also serves as backup oxygen and power for the suit and even puzzle elements as their behaviour and interactions with other flora can be harnessed to proceed, which both builds the world and solves a puzzle simultaneously.

It reminded me a bit of RE4 in the way I had to constantly weigh up what to use and what to keep. I guess any game with inventory management but it led to a couple of agonizing moments when I was running out of power but the only source I had of it was a really valuable sample I would have to go really far out of my way to get another of. I held out until I was finally able to escape out of the cave and go back to base with the sample.

Unfortunately In Other Waters keeps the pattern here of just not leaning enough into this. For the most part the game is just not hard enough to really make these moments more than a fleeting few episodes. Most of the game is mostly just travelling through relatively empty space occassionally collecting samples, and I weep for those who did not find out the shortcuts for travelling cause man, thats too many clicks at times. At the same time, whenever the game does throw danger at you it demands speed in a game that is best enjoyed leisurely, reading the various blurbs and advancing taking it all in. My ass was not reading those blurbs when I was slowly running out of oxygen or swimming against a strong current.

I am sympathetic however, because for all my complaining there are several reviews both on this site and the steam discussion page complaining about the game being obtuse and not understanding what's going on, so maybe it would be unhelpful to demand it potentially turn more people off? The dev's next game Citizen Sleeper seems to have proven a lot more popular, though ironically I bounced off it pretty hard when I played it. I'll definitely give it another shot now that I have played this.

Another thing that might turn off some, your only dialogue options are yes/no answers to questions by the researcher, given the nature of your being an OS interface. But Im not too bothered by it. Whether or not these options change all that much Im not sure, but Ive always been of the opinion that smaller in scope, character decisions are more meaningful than the more literal choose your own adventure fractal development nightmare of splitting the universe in half based on whether or not I ate chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla. In this respect, I think In Other Waters succeeds, for all the nitpicks I could continue making, I was looking forward to its unfolding intrigue and whilst some beats are pretty predictable, the game managed to surprise me a few times. Hell, I think when done well a plot point you predicted can be just as satisfying as one which took you by surprise, especially given the risk of having to do more ludicrous twists to keep people guessing.

In Other Waters was a lovely little surprise, I thought I was going to bounce off it hard when I saw it on my list of games, but it turned out to be a good match for me. I even caught myself getting out of bed from my groggy state by going "oh boy I get to play some more "In Other Waters" before going to uni in a couple hours; which is always a great sign.

It feels almost absurd to praise Jusant, for its physicality. You are, after all doing no more strenous exercise than pressing and holding a few buttons but its mechanics bring that act as close as it possibly can to the feeling of climbing. Just from the demo I played of it I was instantly sold. Press and Hold LT to grab a ledge with your left hand, use the analogue stick to direct your right hand forward, Press and Hold RT to grab the next ledge with your right hand, let go of LT, rinse repeat.

Jusant uses these ideas as a base which it expands as the game goes along but its so solid as a base, its honestly hard to communicate without barging into your house and handing you the controller to try it out for yourself (incidentally the PC version has a free demo unsubtle hint). I have only ever climbed in indoor rock climbing places or bouldering or whatever its called but it so perfectly recreates the emotional experience of it, a constant tactical and physical question, where do I put my hand next, can I make it from here without losing perch etc.

Added to that the rope mechanics allowing you to set your own pseudo checkpoints, rope swinging physics, momentum, these are all great. Even though the game is really not very hard and the illusion could be broken if you ever honestly tried hard to fuck yourself up, this didnt really bother me. The familiar "Oh is that how you were supposed to do that?" and giddy laughter at pulling off some complicated maneuver as simple as letting a rock bug carry you left so you can place a piton (thing you use to attach the rope to the wall to make sure you dont fall all the way down) to then rappel a bit and use left to right momentum to jump on to a previously unreachable ledge, well, it's pretty goddamned great.

The structure works so well, the constant climb weaves in and out of the rock wall like a sewing needle, after a few subsections in the dark underside of the mountain being greeted by our old friend the sun feels so novel you forget you already saw a similar view 10 minutes ago. The ever vertical climb works narratively and spectacle wise, constantly recontextualising the scale of it all by seeing familiar landmarks grow smaller and smaller until they are but a speck in the distance. And if you pay attention to the changing environments (and admittedly rather weak random documents/journal entries that every videogame and their dog needs to have which rather overexplains things) they tell a story too, of the society which lived on the mountain but which slowly saw the tide and water recede away...

On that note, I share the game's fascination with seeing previously underwater areas dry. I grew up near a beach filled with banks of sandstone and other such structures which made the bay a natural pond when the tide receded. Everything that was unearthed temporarily just made child me fascinated. The game is thankfully, gorgeous, its nice to see a game use Unreal Engine's fancy new tricks to make a nice stylised game which goes for a sort of moebius by way of claymation and pixar movie? I could almost feel the rock and clay surfaces from its smooth gradients of grey, yellow, red and brown.

My only real complaint is the vertical charged jump seems temperamental, and especially when the "sparks" ability is introduced in chapter 4 which is not entirely unrelatedly my least favourite section of the game. It replaces your double jump with a sort of vertical glide but I was just constantly being flung diagonally by my first jump, meaning the upwards thrust left me too far to reach the ledge. With decreasing max stamina from each jump this got quite annoying, let me tell you. Eventually I overcame that section through what seemed to me to be luck, essentially. If there is something Im missing here or a mechanic I misunderstood Id genuinely love to hear it.

I played the Demo for jusant back in June and was dismayed to realize it wasnt coming out until october (almost november, really) but I think it was worth the wait. Loved the soundtrack and the finale is a great little send off for the game as a whole, I would recommend Jusant to anyone who would read this whole thing to the end, have a good one.

Edit : I am the dumbest person alive. On a second playthrough, I realize that I read the tutorial wrong, the charged jump works by pointing towards the thing you want to jump, not inverted. I went through the entire game not realizing that somehow. In my very weak defense, when charge jumping horizontally you point away from the direction youre going (logically, thats how momentum works) but when jumping up/down seemingly the animation is the same i.e pointing down. Anyways I havent finished my replay but as an apology and because it was my only real complaint, Im awarding an extra half star to Jusant, godspeed.

Perfect, but the original already was.

I imagine that my reaction to hearing about a Resident Evil 4 remake was pretty similar to most: confusion. What about Resident Evil 4 needed to be remade, really? The game was about a decade ahead of its time when it dropped in 2005, and virtually every third-person shooter made since then has had some of Leon Kennedy’s sharp-jawed, Bingo-quipping DNA inside of it somewhere. Moreover, the idea of trying to do Resident Evil 4 but again — or God forbid, better — is still kind of laughable. You’re going to remake one of the greatest and most influential games ever made on a lark to see if you can do it too? Good luck.

But, lo and behold, they did it. Resident Evil 4 Remake is a fucking phenomenal game. The combat is heavy and satisfying, it’s a delight to look at, the characters are all enjoyable, and I put thirty hours into it over the course of about a week and a half without really even noticing. I finished one playthrough, finished Separate Ways, and then immediately started another run on a harder difficulty. When I'm done with that run, I'm going to play it again, and again. It’s perfect.

How much does it deserve to be celebrated, though, when what it’s based off of was that good to begin with?

I’ve heard people talk about “remake culture” quite a bit in recent years in relation to video games, and I don’t think it’s an entirely wrong observation that the same games seem to be releasing a lot lately. Naughty Dog is perhaps the easiest studio to point and laugh at over this — The Last of Us is a series that’s about to have a higher number of remakes of its original games than the actual amount of original games — but it is something of a trend in the industry right now. Granted, we’ve been getting high-profile remakes and remasters of games for about fifteen fucking years now, so it’s hardly new, but people seem to be, for whatever reason, noticing it more lately. Common criticisms drifting up now are that remakes are lazy, and overly safe, and cash-grabby. I agree insofar as the fact that I’d vastly prefer if more games could look forward, rather than back. There are a lot of very talented creators out there with a lot of fresh concepts that ought to be allowed to flourish, and it’s stifling the maturity of the medium to insist that we just keep playing the hits every night with a different band.

Despite this, it remains evident that not all remakes are created equal. I found the Dead Space remake to be a complete bastardization of the original, with slippery, weightless gunplay and animations, and little actually improved aside from bringing back Gunnar Wright and some more technically impressive lighting effects. By contrast, I was surprised at how much Resident Evil 4 Remake impressed me, introducing much more committal combat into the original’s stage design and vastly expanding a lot of the systems that went woefully underused back in 2005. Both games have exceptional scores in both popular games coverage and right here on Backloggd, so either I missed something major in Dead Space, or people are just so predisposed to celebrating something good and old being new again that they just hand it a high score without really thinking about it. I’m sure it’s reductive, but I’m willing to bet it’s the latter. If you don’t trust me to say it, I’m certain that these high-profile, mega-budget companies making the fucking things would take my position; why would they be cranking these things out with the massive budgets and marketing campaigns that they’ve had if they weren’t confident people were going to drop everything to get a copy on release day? Saying you’re going to take something that people enjoyed and just make it again is an almost surefire way to guarantee a boatload of sales from those so caught in the hype cycle that they won’t even wait to see if it’s been fucked with before they buy it.

Anyway, I’m getting off-track. The point to make here is that I think there’s a single element that really makes Resident Evil 4 Remake stand out from among its more cynical contemporaries.

It was very clearly made by people who love the original.

“Yeah, yeah, the multi-million dollar game was made with goddamned love”, I know. But there are so many small changes here that I seriously doubt you’d be able to make or notice without having a deep appreciation and understanding for what the original was doing. EA never had a clue what made Dead Space great. Yasuhiro Anpo and company down at Capcom, however, get it.

Early on, during the village fight, there’s this tall tower standing down by the church entrance. There’s not much in there — just a herb and a ladder leading up — but this was an immensely safe spot to hide in the original. You could climb all the way up to the top, hang out for a few seconds, hop back down before the ganados started throwing molotovs at you, and then repeat. You could wait out the entire fight just by doing a simple loop of climbing up, dropping down, and then climbing back up again, and they couldn’t do a thing to stop you. Naturally, knowing about this safe spot, I went up the ladder and prepared to dig in. It was at this point that the floor gave out under Leon’s feet and dropped him right into the middle of the crowd congregating at the bottom.

To come up with a trap like this requires a few things on the part of the developers:
a) to know about the safe spot in the original game,
b) to expect the player to also know about the safe spot in the original game,
c) to bait the player into attempting to use the safe spot in the remake (by making the fight significantly more demanding)

It doesn’t sound like much, but take a second to consider the amount of understanding you need to have about Resident Evil 4 to be aware that the safe spot actually existed in the first place. It’s a decently-known exploit — enough so that the original developers accounted for it when they put out the game — but it’s nothing that a casual player would be aware of. It’s a remarkably small change in the grand scheme of things, but there’s a constant stream of these equally small changes throughout that add up to truly distinguish this from its predecessor. It’s just enough to keep old players disoriented while still being able to recognize what’s here. It’s a bit less of a remake and more of a remix. It feels like a very high-budget fangame, and I mean that in a good way.

With the release of Separate Ways adding back in a little more story context and some previously-excluded areas that I missed — the sewers, my beloved, are back — Resident Evil 4 Remake feels like a complete experience. I imagine that you’ll have a worse time without the DLC, and that kind of sucks when that shit came free with the original as long as you didn’t buy it on Gamecube. I managed to cop the base game and Separate Ways on sale for about fifty bucks, and they added Mercenaries mode to this in a patch at some point in the past couple months; this is definitely a game that is significantly better now than it was when it came out, which I think is kind of regrettable. It’s barely been out for eight months and I’m having a way better time for less money than people who picked it up on day one. This is a broader condemnation of the industry, I suppose. I like it when games come out feature-complete, and I'd argue this didn't. But hell, what does, anymore?

I do have my quibbles with the game. Unarmed enemies are the most dangerous fuckers alive because of that unblockable lunge they do that covers about two miles of distance and has to be ducked under at a precise time if they don’t flinch from being shot, which happens a lot on the harder difficulties. Knife parries are exceptionally overpowered and essentially give you a “get-out-of-bad-positioning free” card for a significant portion of the game. A lot of the music has been changed from its original synth-y sound to more of a Hans Zimmer-esque orchestral score, and that’s a major disappointment; the sequence where Mike comes down in his chopper is easily the worst offender of the lot, sounding like something pulled directly off of the Dark Knight Rises soundtrack. The reticle sway when Leon aims is a little extreme and definitely should have been tuned down a little. There’s something intangible that I feel was lost in getting rid of the tank controls and the stationary aiming; Resident Evil 4 definitely controls a bit more like everything else now, rather than controlling like what inspired everything else.

Even with those complaints, this is still a phenomenal title. I think the developers of this remake understood way more about what fans of the original wanted than anyone was expecting them to, and they’ve created something that stands alongside one of the greatest games ever made. By no means does it replace nor exceed the original, but it’s on the same level, and that alone is a borderline unthinkable achievement.

And they didn’t “make the mine thrower good” in this. It was always good, you cowards.

death stranding but for the ds…
which is cool!! more games should go about emulating the ds/3ds and psp/vita rather than another game that looks like if u squint it could be on the n64 or ps1. love how abstract and hostile this games world is, everything wants to kill u and more importantly everyone wants to kill each other. while exploring the world you’ll find randos shooting each other, too caught up in their own drama too care about someone as small as you are unless you care enough to shoot them first. it’s smart and it makes the world feel so much more lively despite the fact that it’s past death. it’s post the post-apocalypse. gameplay v clever despite how it’s barely a thing, lots of cool and tense stuff in terms of time management, makes it actually feel like some weird obscure ds survival horror game that never was. also yas just rlly love how brutally harsh and sudden the changes from day to night and back again are and how well that kind of fits the tone the game is going for.

grew up w this series :-)) but only the later games so wanted to come back and play the early titles. skating and skate culture was literally such a big piece of my life for so long like basically the entirety of my teenage years. was cute to play this and see how the series started and how it always was just so fucking good. not much in this world has a feeling as freeing as skating and consistently so impressed w how well this series manages that tone and vibe.

hard to explain if you haven’t seen any but skate videos of the mid - late 90s just have this v specific look and vibe and it’s genuinely rlly beautiful. very hard to describe but very beautiful. original thps isn’t like as fun or freeing as later entries but it feels the most like being in a skate video if that makes sense. like it definitely has to do somewhat w how locked that camera is which unintentionally (??) recreates lots of similar shots and angles from vids of the era. idk for a couple weeks in ‘21 I was recording lots of footage from american wasteland/underground 2 and the end goal there was to edit together a music video of it set to haunted - laura les lmaoo

anyhow neversoft were cooking even in the first entry. lots of rlly sexy level design here, mall level stands the fuck out w how empty and sparse it is, very eerie in the same way rando urbex videos on youtube are. the Minneapolis level def the best in terms of how the level is constructed to best get tricks that u would see in skate videos.

cool stuff in less interesting levels too like the skate bowl w the neversoft eye inside of it or how the light blinds the camera at the very beginning of the downhill jam level when ur going up on the damn. played the remaster from the early 2010s on steam around when it originally released and didn’t like it at the time but after playing how it’s actually supposed to play and feel like I like it a lot less lmaoo. I hate being negative but damn that thing sucked sm and playing these levels was like a weird distortion of a memory. the music videos that play in select levels look so good too, big into when live action footage seeps into games actually when it’s as compressed as this. also I just spent a good while looking at some of the real life skate footage of each skater on the main menu

good soundtrack :-)) unsane is here but also jerry was a race car driver

How do you folks keep your creative drive up?
Everytime I create something I half ass it, because I tell myself I can't disappoint myself if I didn't actually try.
It doesn't even work and I still end up disappointed with myself.
I never really like the outcome that much, at least not enough find the drive to finish it, at most I'll post unfinished stuff somewhere in the attempt find motivation and then I don't create art inside that medium for another six months. The result of that lack of commitment or honing my craft to get better at it will come back to haunt me when I pick it up again just to half ass it again and demotivate myself again, because my efforts and results didn't make any progress since last time.
I got like two half finished game projects, a bunch of unfinished demo songs, two short film scripts and a portfolio full of drawings of which the quality has barely progressed since I was sixteen, not to mention all the half finished reviews with attempts at poetics in my notes app.
I am revealing this because folks knowing about it might make that unfinished art closer to getting finished.. might make the finished project more real. idk might make it more than just a thing in my room I can ignore the state of, because I am the only one who knows about it.
But rn I can just can never find the motivation to finish any of that stuff.
I'll rather start another thing just to drop it again it seems.
There is never a creative drive to fully commit.
I'll half ass it, cause its easier that way.
I can't find my mojo anymore.

Even this vent is half assed ngl.

Shit, I can can't even finish playing longer Games recently.

This game is the vent channel now btw.

Now that I have essentially "finished" my backlog, I have decided that chipping away at a little project in between new releases would be cool. So I'm setting out to play a bunch of games set underwater. Unfortunately it seems most games with such a setting are horror games, and I really don't have any interest in that.

Why is everyone so obsessed with the ocean being scary? Have you been in the ocean before? Its cool. Okay its a bit dark and sometimes there's creatures that can harm you (like box jellyfish) but so are loads of places on earth. No, I have a pretty strict rule, I'll only be playing games where I'm not required to harm the wildlife, even in "self defence". I guess it's okay if wildlife can harm me, but for the most part I'm looking for calm, meditative experiences, which thankfully Beyond Blue provides.

It's just nice following the mission structure exploring several underwater areas scanning different species and learning more about the ocean and marine biology with an ongoing radio drama between the various researchers to serve as a throughline for the game. Importantly, the game knows when to shut the hell up and let me swim with reef sharks without blabbing away endlessly, a lesson that certain contemporary game writers could take to heart cough cough.

I will say, if you do not find it cool as shit to see whale sharks and sunfish and stuff like that then this game will probably fall flat on its face for you, although it is quite short, so I think it would be hard to grow THAT bored of it that quick, its fairly unspectacular mechanically. The narrative is also not winning awards either but it works. I learned a lot of things I did not know about and the characters are somewhat well realized for what it is.

I can see the complaints about the relatively anticlimatic resolution but at the risk of getting pelted with stones, I think it fits. First of all because I dont think its the games' focus but also because the problems the characters' face are not really neatly solvable, life simply doesn't work that way. That sounds like a cop out but I think there is enough of glimpse of hope for the characters' issues to work as a narratively satisfying experience, personally. They will go on.

I'm not sure which game is next on this list, if you have recommendations I'd be glad to hear them. I already played Mythic Ocean and had a go at Endless Ocean, but i could not for the life of me tweak the mouse cursor in Dolphin to follow the Wiimote cursor 1-1 and it bothered the hell out of me, so I'm afraid I'll have to skip on those. I have also already watched a stream of Aquanaut's holiday with a friend so probably won't do that one again.