dud
BACKER
2022
I love this game. I want to take a semester-long course devoted to discussing this game. I am at most six months out from wishing I could Eternal Sunshine this game out of my head so I could discover it all over again.
It's incredible how well this story unfolds given that it's split into hundreds of pieces that no two players will experience in the same order. I never felt like One Big Question was the only thing driving me; I chased my curiosity in dozens of directions and the more I did, the more my understanding of the overall geography of the story formed without me even having to try. Pieces of the story would rearrange themselves in my mind and fall into place even when I wasn't playing. More than once I'd be going about my day and suddenly make a connection between two clips I'd seen the night before, and that would inform what I went looking for the next time I sat down to play.
I hit credits about five hours in, and by seven or eight I was pretty confident I'd uncovered all of the game's major secrets, but I'm a completionist at heart and I kept wanting to do more and more. I chased down every clip, I unlocked every achievement, and then I rewatched all the game's footage in chronological order. And honestly, even being the kind of person who would do that, I was surprised by how much that paid off. I'd understood the broad strokes of the story before, but so many smaller moments came into focus that it was like discovering them all over again. Completionism usually involves diminishing returns, but the closer I looked the more Immortality rewarded me for it. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.
It's incredible how well this story unfolds given that it's split into hundreds of pieces that no two players will experience in the same order. I never felt like One Big Question was the only thing driving me; I chased my curiosity in dozens of directions and the more I did, the more my understanding of the overall geography of the story formed without me even having to try. Pieces of the story would rearrange themselves in my mind and fall into place even when I wasn't playing. More than once I'd be going about my day and suddenly make a connection between two clips I'd seen the night before, and that would inform what I went looking for the next time I sat down to play.
I hit credits about five hours in, and by seven or eight I was pretty confident I'd uncovered all of the game's major secrets, but I'm a completionist at heart and I kept wanting to do more and more. I chased down every clip, I unlocked every achievement, and then I rewatched all the game's footage in chronological order. And honestly, even being the kind of person who would do that, I was surprised by how much that paid off. I'd understood the broad strokes of the story before, but so many smaller moments came into focus that it was like discovering them all over again. Completionism usually involves diminishing returns, but the closer I looked the more Immortality rewarded me for it. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.
2021
I really enjoyed this! Short and sweet, keeps up decent momentum for a handful of hours and doesn't overstay its welcome. Tying relationship progression to combat progression worked really well; the two systems played off each other without making it feel overly grindy trying to max out every relationship (the whetsone is invaluable here, it was great planning on the devs' part to make that available when they did).
I'm curious what a 20-hour version of this game might look like. I was expecting four dunjes (dunji?) based on the plushie cabinet, and at the very least I think it could have used a third. Higher difficulty, or maybe less generosity with XP, would have forced me to me more thoughtful about combat. As it was, there was a lot going on with zines/abilities/items that I barely ever looked at.
But like I said, it's a nice breezy play as is, and resources are finite so I get why the scope is what it is. The only real pain point for me was the text messages. I'm not the most patient person, and it was frustrating to wait for series of messages to come in, particularly when multiple people were texting me at once.
I'm curious what a 20-hour version of this game might look like. I was expecting four dunjes (dunji?) based on the plushie cabinet, and at the very least I think it could have used a third. Higher difficulty, or maybe less generosity with XP, would have forced me to me more thoughtful about combat. As it was, there was a lot going on with zines/abilities/items that I barely ever looked at.
But like I said, it's a nice breezy play as is, and resources are finite so I get why the scope is what it is. The only real pain point for me was the text messages. I'm not the most patient person, and it was frustrating to wait for series of messages to come in, particularly when multiple people were texting me at once.
2017
Pyre does a masterful job of intertwining gameplay and story. Structuring the game so that you'll progress regardless of your win/loss record raised the narrative stakes for me by making the story more immersive - sure, as the player I would reach the end of the game whether I won the Rites or not, but as the Reader my goals could be completely derailed if the Rites didn't go my way. Knowing I could fail and the game would play out the consequences of that loss made victory feel much more important.
There's also a really great balance here between the amount of control I had over the story vs the choices I was forced to make - I had to make some really difficult choices about which characters to anoint and which to keep. It's the difference between a different game saying "you can't do X because we didn't script that" and Pyre saying "you can't do X because that would be too easy." The agony of loving a character who can hoop...you want to grant their freedom but you need them for the rites. I missed my friends when they were gone, but I knew it had been my decision to let them leave.
Put it all together and I don't remember the last time I was so invested in a game's story. There were rites that felt like Finals games to me because so much was on the line, and then there were routine rites that might as well have been for liberation because I just hated the other team so much I didn't want to give them the satisfaction. There were rites I considered throwing because I was won over by my opponent's story.
On top of that, it's a gorgeous game with a signature Supergiant soundtrack. I'll be coming back to this one a lot.
There's also a really great balance here between the amount of control I had over the story vs the choices I was forced to make - I had to make some really difficult choices about which characters to anoint and which to keep. It's the difference between a different game saying "you can't do X because we didn't script that" and Pyre saying "you can't do X because that would be too easy." The agony of loving a character who can hoop...you want to grant their freedom but you need them for the rites. I missed my friends when they were gone, but I knew it had been my decision to let them leave.
Put it all together and I don't remember the last time I was so invested in a game's story. There were rites that felt like Finals games to me because so much was on the line, and then there were routine rites that might as well have been for liberation because I just hated the other team so much I didn't want to give them the satisfaction. There were rites I considered throwing because I was won over by my opponent's story.
On top of that, it's a gorgeous game with a signature Supergiant soundtrack. I'll be coming back to this one a lot.
I understand that the point of this game is for it to be a miserable experience. And they did a great job executing that! It was a miserable experience!
I don't understand why this is a roguelite. It's maybe interesting enough to play through to the end with save points, but there just isn't enough here to make it worth going back to the start every time you die. The story isn't enough reason for me to keep going because I always feel less like I'm piecing together what's become of Desta's relationships and more like the game has just neglected to give me context. There's no reason for this much dialogue to repeat verbatim when there's no telling how many times the player will sit through it.
Playing on a phone the controls feel extremely finicky, it might be better on a tablet but I don't think that would fix everything.
It usually takes a lot for me to abandon a game, but I just don't have it in me to start this from scratch yet again.
Playing on a phone the controls feel extremely finicky, it might be better on a tablet but I don't think that would fix everything.
It usually takes a lot for me to abandon a game, but I just don't have it in me to start this from scratch yet again.
2021
Realistically, I don't know if I would have finished this if I hadn't started it the day it was leaving Game Pass. Since I had a deadline, I did it more or less in one sitting.
I enjoyed it, but unfortunately the parts I was most interested in were not the parts the game was most interested in. Meena's story never felt like anything more than something I had to get through to unlock new chapters for Donna and John. And for those two stories, what I enjoyed the most was the interpersonal stuff, all their relationships with the people in their lives, and it was unfortunate to see that get ignored completely for the hour and change before the epilogue. Combining the final chapters like that just led to none of the arcs having an especially satisfying conclusion.
Mechanically there's not much going on here, but I'd argue there should be even less. Almost any time I had something to do that wasn't just choosing a dialogue option, it was superfluous and often clunky - busy work that was put into the game to pacify people who think it doesn't count as a game if it doesn't have enough opportunities to push a button. I would've been fine if they'd just owned how little control the player has and saved me the trouble.
Overall: I'm glad I played this on Game Pass instead of buying it, but I did enjoy my time with it! I have NOTES on how my "Molly has two dads" dreams turned out but that's neither here nor there.
I enjoyed it, but unfortunately the parts I was most interested in were not the parts the game was most interested in. Meena's story never felt like anything more than something I had to get through to unlock new chapters for Donna and John. And for those two stories, what I enjoyed the most was the interpersonal stuff, all their relationships with the people in their lives, and it was unfortunate to see that get ignored completely for the hour and change before the epilogue. Combining the final chapters like that just led to none of the arcs having an especially satisfying conclusion.
Mechanically there's not much going on here, but I'd argue there should be even less. Almost any time I had something to do that wasn't just choosing a dialogue option, it was superfluous and often clunky - busy work that was put into the game to pacify people who think it doesn't count as a game if it doesn't have enough opportunities to push a button. I would've been fine if they'd just owned how little control the player has and saved me the trouble.
Overall: I'm glad I played this on Game Pass instead of buying it, but I did enjoy my time with it! I have NOTES on how my "Molly has two dads" dreams turned out but that's neither here nor there.
Precise timing in games is really not my strong suit, and the combat in this game puts a HUGE emphasis on timing, so it's honestly kind of a surprise that I still mostly enjoyed myself. (I gave up on Bros Attacks maybe six hours in, and got by surprisingly well without them until I ended up utterly outclassed in the final Cackletta fight.)
I liked the abilities and the game's creativity in pushing you to make regular use of them all, although it could get tedious at times - when I was exploring I enjoyed figuring out how to traverse a section, but when I was just trying to move quickly across a couple of screens to get to my destination it could be a pain to have to switch between abilities. They also got unwieldy once I'd unlocked them all, since I tended to keep the minimap open rather than using the Moves screen.
Overall it was a fun time with a lot of little touches that I loved (the Dr. Mario viruses in the Hooniversity were a particular standout). I'm pretty sure I originally got this game because someone somewhere made a Super Mario RPG comparison, and the game absolutely has that vibe even if it doesn't reach the same heights.
Bowser's Minions was fine for what it was, an optional add-in. I played through maybe a section and a half just to try it out, but I didn't feel a need to go any further.
I liked the abilities and the game's creativity in pushing you to make regular use of them all, although it could get tedious at times - when I was exploring I enjoyed figuring out how to traverse a section, but when I was just trying to move quickly across a couple of screens to get to my destination it could be a pain to have to switch between abilities. They also got unwieldy once I'd unlocked them all, since I tended to keep the minimap open rather than using the Moves screen.
Overall it was a fun time with a lot of little touches that I loved (the Dr. Mario viruses in the Hooniversity were a particular standout). I'm pretty sure I originally got this game because someone somewhere made a Super Mario RPG comparison, and the game absolutely has that vibe even if it doesn't reach the same heights.
Bowser's Minions was fine for what it was, an optional add-in. I played through maybe a section and a half just to try it out, but I didn't feel a need to go any further.
2023
This review contains spoilers
I wish I'd wandered away from this game 10-15 hours earlier so I could remember it fondly and think about circling back and beating it someday. All I'm left with now is how frustrated I am. The story falls apart the longer the game goes on, and the combat isn't complex enough to stay compelling for the duration of a "true ending" playthrough. That's especially true because the true ending requires beating a series of additional bosses, and completing those sidequests in quick succession along with the game's final bosses really strips bare how little variety there is from fight to fight. (I'm pretty sure the Elder Mist's automatic counter was the only thing in the entire game that made me think about my approach beyond "break locks and manage healing.")
I was really disappointed to find out after the fact that so many of the elements that felt out of place or incomplete to me are actually threads connecting Sea of Stars to The Messenger. I would have just played that first if they'd been upfront about how heavily intertwined the stories are instead of calling Sea of Stars self-contained. Love to close on a shot of a giant bowl and think "what the hell is that" only to find out from the internet that it's a reference to a different game.
This is minor but I think it's a good example of an undeniable pattern in this game where I wish they'd reworked small elements or tightened things up - why on earth do you cash in conches in Docarri? It's like they just thought "water + conches" with no consideration for how it would affect gameplay. First, you can be thirty conches deep before you even know what they're for, which means that finding them quickly stops feeling like any kind of reward. Second, cashing in conches after the first batch is a nightmare. Why do I have to make a special trip to Watcher Island and go through Jungle Path TWICE every time I want to trade in more? Just put it in Brisk! You go there early, you return there plenty of times for story reasons, and it's quick to access directly from the world map!
Similar to that, the game unnecessarily wasted my time in a lot of ways that might have been small on their own, but caused mounting frustration over time. The coded tablet in Moraine's office just being a list of Discord handles...the absolute nightmare of trying to backtrack any time before the very end of the game...forcing the player into the "lesser" ending even if all sidequests are complete and all conches are collected, when there's no story reason why the true ending couldn't be the first (and only) ending you encounter.
Garl's death and later return could have been handled so much better. With Wraith Island in the mix it was just one too many "Garl in mortal peril" stories, and while the story leading up to his death is a standout, it also went on long enough that I started thinking "if they're dedicating this much time to Garl dying, it's really going to feel like a copout if they manage to cure him or bring him back later." So of course...they did bring him back. Which is fine! I love Garl! But the balance, like so much in this game, just wasn't right, and that's exacerbated by the pointlessness of gating his resurrection behind the first roll of the credits.
There's a good stretch of this game that's really fun even if it's not transcendent, but I wish the whole thing came together more compellingly than it does.
I was really disappointed to find out after the fact that so many of the elements that felt out of place or incomplete to me are actually threads connecting Sea of Stars to The Messenger. I would have just played that first if they'd been upfront about how heavily intertwined the stories are instead of calling Sea of Stars self-contained. Love to close on a shot of a giant bowl and think "what the hell is that" only to find out from the internet that it's a reference to a different game.
This is minor but I think it's a good example of an undeniable pattern in this game where I wish they'd reworked small elements or tightened things up - why on earth do you cash in conches in Docarri? It's like they just thought "water + conches" with no consideration for how it would affect gameplay. First, you can be thirty conches deep before you even know what they're for, which means that finding them quickly stops feeling like any kind of reward. Second, cashing in conches after the first batch is a nightmare. Why do I have to make a special trip to Watcher Island and go through Jungle Path TWICE every time I want to trade in more? Just put it in Brisk! You go there early, you return there plenty of times for story reasons, and it's quick to access directly from the world map!
Similar to that, the game unnecessarily wasted my time in a lot of ways that might have been small on their own, but caused mounting frustration over time. The coded tablet in Moraine's office just being a list of Discord handles...the absolute nightmare of trying to backtrack any time before the very end of the game...forcing the player into the "lesser" ending even if all sidequests are complete and all conches are collected, when there's no story reason why the true ending couldn't be the first (and only) ending you encounter.
Garl's death and later return could have been handled so much better. With Wraith Island in the mix it was just one too many "Garl in mortal peril" stories, and while the story leading up to his death is a standout, it also went on long enough that I started thinking "if they're dedicating this much time to Garl dying, it's really going to feel like a copout if they manage to cure him or bring him back later." So of course...they did bring him back. Which is fine! I love Garl! But the balance, like so much in this game, just wasn't right, and that's exacerbated by the pointlessness of gating his resurrection behind the first roll of the credits.
There's a good stretch of this game that's really fun even if it's not transcendent, but I wish the whole thing came together more compellingly than it does.
2017
This didn't really land for me, but in a way where I'm sure I'll spend the rest of my day thinking about it. Lots of great stuff but I just couldn't forgive the pacing.
1994
Great game with fantastic puzzle platforming. The difficulty level is just right - I racked up a ton of extra lives in the first few worlds but no matter how high the number got, I never felt complacent. The game always made sure I knew that I was just a couple of especially tough levels away from burning through them all.
2008
The time manipulation in this game is cool, but I think it misses a lot of opportunities by not combining mechanics - you generally only have one tool at your disposal at any given time.
The story is dumb but in fairness I thought a lot of dumb things were extremely deep in 2008.
The story is dumb but in fairness I thought a lot of dumb things were extremely deep in 2008.
2019
It's far from perfect but by the end I was enjoying myself too much to care.
I wish they'd done more with the drinking mechanic. I thought they would let you be strategic about your drink choices depending on what attitude would be most helpful in a given situation, but ultimately the different drinks seemed more like a novelty option than anything else.
There's a lot here that Oxenfree did significantly better (it seems to matter if characters like you, but I didn't feel my choices shaping relationships in the same way and I missed that) but I still had a great time with it. I loved exploring Hell and I loved the story. Whatever faults the rest of the game had, the last half hour was fantastic and the ending I got left me delighted.
I wish they'd done more with the drinking mechanic. I thought they would let you be strategic about your drink choices depending on what attitude would be most helpful in a given situation, but ultimately the different drinks seemed more like a novelty option than anything else.
There's a lot here that Oxenfree did significantly better (it seems to matter if characters like you, but I didn't feel my choices shaping relationships in the same way and I missed that) but I still had a great time with it. I loved exploring Hell and I loved the story. Whatever faults the rest of the game had, the last half hour was fantastic and the ending I got left me delighted.
1994
Revisited this because recently I’d seen a lot of references to it being really difficult. “What are people talking about? I loved this when I was a kid and I don’t remember it being super hard.”
Then I died fifteen times trying to get through Snow Barrel Blast before accidentally falling into the shortcut barrel.
Anyway, still a great game, but I did miss the relative polish of DKC2 - the foundation is here but the sequel really perfected things.
Then I died fifteen times trying to get through Snow Barrel Blast before accidentally falling into the shortcut barrel.
Anyway, still a great game, but I did miss the relative polish of DKC2 - the foundation is here but the sequel really perfected things.
This was fun! My playthrough was a bit anticlimactic - not sure if it’s supposed to effectively end at Angel Yards, but that was the point where I decided to take a chance and see how far my existing food and water would get me…to the end of the game with loads to spare, as it turned out. I still had a blast with everything up to that point, and I can see myself revisiting on Endless mode sometime for a more involved challenge.
The inventory system could use some QOL improvements - it’s frustrating to have to move stuff around between multiple inventory sets all the time to stack them or because you can’t consume items directly from raft inventory even when you’re within range of the raft.
Loved the soundtrack, though the way it was deployed felt random and sporadic.
The inventory system could use some QOL improvements - it’s frustrating to have to move stuff around between multiple inventory sets all the time to stack them or because you can’t consume items directly from raft inventory even when you’re within range of the raft.
Loved the soundtrack, though the way it was deployed felt random and sporadic.
Easily my favorite of the new-to-me games from my Zelda playthrough so far. Storywise I absolutely adored the middle stretch of the game, and while what came after never reached those heights again it was still a fantastic experience. All my complaints are minor (some temple-specific mechanics are frustrating, the Ghost Ship was a letdown, and there's a story choice I didn't love).
Overall I had an absolute blast with this - I lost myself in exploring the sea for hours, and the main quest had some fantastic set pieces that hit me right in my Zelda-loving heart.
Overall I had an absolute blast with this - I lost myself in exploring the sea for hours, and the main quest had some fantastic set pieces that hit me right in my Zelda-loving heart.