mordwywr
212 Reviews liked by mordwywr
100 Asian Cats
2023
I promise I won't use hints on the next one...
RuneScape
2001
The first MMO that I ever played and the game that defined my childhood. I learned more from this game than I ever learned from anything else. Not to trust people blindly and use my brain to make good decisions, how to work hard to achieve a goal, how to work together towards a common goal, how to enjoy the small things in a game, how to make friends and how to deal with conflict, and most importantly, how to properly shit talk someone.
Runescape permanently altered my brain chemistry, and while I haven't played RS3 since 2018. I plan on eventually playing again eventually and enjoying that version of the game with an open-minded perspective.
Runescape permanently altered my brain chemistry, and while I haven't played RS3 since 2018. I plan on eventually playing again eventually and enjoying that version of the game with an open-minded perspective.
This review contains spoilers
With television, I - and I suspect many others - are often willing to give things that annoy them a pass in the hopes that they'll be resolved or addressed later on. This has a bad habit of building up lingering resentment which often erupts when the payoffs are underwhelming.
With live service games, this effect has been brought to the medium of videogames! Hurray!
I was relatively fond of the moment-to-moment of Penacony. I liked all the worldbuilding in 2.0 and the first reveal of how creepy the "real" Dreamscape is still sticks with me. 2.1 and 2.2 were great ruminations on Nihilism (I'm noting a pattern in my writing...) that, surprisingly for a big-budget gacha, were willing to approach it from the angle of people who weren't in a position of power as well as someone with a chronic condition. Also the character writing was phenomenal, so much so that my character-loving brain and my meta-whore brain often got to pull together in harmony.
The environments were beautiful and, after relatively straightforward encounters on Jarilo and the Luofu, Mihoyo took off the limiters and delivered much more enjoyable encounters that weren't as easy to unga-bunga. Music was wonderful too, it was nice to see a company tackled "Jazz inspired" in a way that wasn't just "we want the Persona 5 market".
But if you're familiar with how I write you're probably aware by now that I'm very rigid most of the time, and with low-star reviews there's usually a pittance of praise before I go all in. Well, in the same way I found Penacony to be predictable when I didn't want it to be, I too am going to meet your expectations and nothing more.
True to the opening, there were parts of Penacony I very much didn't like, but omitted them from any discussion about the arc because I was under the impression that they'd either be addressed directly, or at least expanded on.
In 2.0 I wasn't really fond of the Firefly stuff, feeling that it went a bit too hard on the character shilling in ways that call to mind the uncomfortable shit FFXIV keeps doing with G'raha Tia. Similarly, I felt the reveal of Robin's murder came out of nowhere and had little weight for both the player and the protagonists given that she had a grand total of, what, two appearances beforehand?
2.2 comes along after the inoffensive 2.1 and it goes back to the Firefly-is-your-bestie stuff, while also forcing Robin into the narrative in ways that frankly feel out of character for this game? She doesn't really get an introduction or anything resembling development, she's just there and helps out at the finale. Her brother Sunday, at the time of writing an NPC, steals the spotlight.
But there's also a moment near the end of 2.2 where, upon realizing you're in a fakeout good ending, the path to the actual final boss occurs in a brief cutscene, and also someone tells you that Firefly died off-screen. Oh and once it's done you find out Aventurine somehow escaped from the Nihility, which is wrapped up in of all things a missable text message. (Argenti saved him... What?)
I was willing to forgive all of this because the core was mostly solid, and for 2.2 especially I assumed 2.3 would wrap it all up.
Unfortunately, it doesn't wrap much of anything up.
Just to walk this through back-to-front, I really don't like that Aventurine was given so much focus in 2.1 and his status as "basically doomed" in the Nihility's embrace highlighted so cleanly at the end, only for him to get rescued off-screen by a random gay guy that players can potentially never meet if they skip the Washtopia quest. I figured they wouldn't explicitly kill a popular character, but if Tingyun can exist in will-she-won't-she limbo for a full year then Aventurine can play cards with himself in Sin City Limbo.
Similarly, I'd assumed that him abruptly being pulled out of Cumbernauld- sorry, limbo, was meant to signify that he'd have a role in the upcoming IPC vs Penacony negotiations that've hung over the entire arc like a Sword of Damocles, but he doesn't. He's just... there.
And speaking of the IPC stuff, it feels at odds with both the story before it and also the characters participating in it.
Jade (one of the Ten Stonehearts, Topaz and Aventurine's coworker/elder) appears and after a lot of vague infodumping to catch inattentive players up to speed, she browbeats a rather alarming Greedy Merchant stereotype into submission, getting a 30% stake in the Penacony corporation and giving 5% to the Astral Express.
That last bit is what I take issue with. In the last IPC-centric storyline involving Topaz, it's made super clear that Himeko is merely neutral towards the IPC and is entirely willing to sabotage their operations for the benefit of any potential victims. It's somewhat strange and - dare I say the forbidden words - out of character for her to just blindly go "Oh yup sure this deal is fine :)" and end the conflict.
That all of the exchanges leading up to her assisting in the capitalistic colonialism of Penacony are off-screen doesn't help. Penacony has a bit of a problem with off-screening vital things and it's at its worst in this patch. It's doubly strange because Penacony was the arc where Mihoyo wisely decided to switch the playable focus over to other characters at crucial plot moments, yet a lot of the stuff involving Himeko and her motivations is just left to the player's imagination.
I single Himeko out because we're a year and change into HSR's lifespan yet, of the Astral Express crew, she's the most flimsy in terms of actual character. I had assumed that, given Penacony was the first arc where she took to the field, we'd get something from her, but no. Off-screen. Yay.
But also just, on a narrative level, this resolution to the IPC stuff isn't very satisfying? As Penacony unfolded it became more and more apparent that a lot of the present-day issues affecting the region stem from the IPC's abuse and tyranny during their initial control over the region. The threat of the IPC even setting foot in Penacony again has, on-screen, several relevant characters go "nuh uh" and plot their downfall. The very notion that Penacony would fall under their ownership again is framed as a huge no-no, a total failstate for the story.
And the Astral Express just let it happen? They encourage it, even. It's an incredibly strange outcome for a game where there's an entire side story about how badly you need to oppose an IPC takeover of Jarilo.
Moving on from that though, this patch goes really hard on the "Firefly is your girlfriend :)" stuff that I found nauseating the last few times, and to be honest? I wish they'd killed her. Not out of spite or malice or whatever, but because the fakeout death she gets is the saddest and wimpiest attempt at drama I've seen since amateur fanfiction.
To wit: Sparkle appears at the end and goes "Muahahaha I planted 999 bombs" which locks you into 5 minute segment where there are far too many jokes, before she reveals there's a 1000th bomb. You go up to Firefly, she gives a very teary-eyed speech about what it means to live with a chronic illness, and flies up into the sky.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand then Sparkle appears to say "nuh uh it's just fireworks she's fine :)". She pushes the Trailblazer off an airship, who is then saved by Firefly. She carried them bridal-style into the sky, they hold hands and twirl, and...
It's cringe. I don't have anything else to say about it. It's cringe. It's embarassing. It made me turn away from my monitor in shame. That one Folding Ideas clip played in my mind, bass boosted and with the volume up.
I wager other people who, like me, were cynical about Firefly will come to the same conclusion, but for me the wedge issue isn't so much the Firefly shilling so much as it is the relative childishness of how this is all written.
On Jarilo-VI and the Xianzhou Luofu, there are two companion quests which start off innocently enough but ultimately turn into haunting and nakedly vulnerable depictions of people with leftover grief. There are no happy resolutions or well-earned smiles, because the people they love didn't die for any good reason, they just died. I know the target audience for this game is teenagers with no impulse control and adults who're a bit too eager to say the word "waifu" (as with most gachas), but these are good quests and they're not the only ones to be so frank about human ugliness.
And, just to preface everything: I do like Firefly. I think it's nice to see some chronic illness representation in a genre where the closest we get is pale people who sometimes cough. As an extension of Penacony's ruminations on the meaning of not only Life but what it means To Live, I think it was great of Mihoyo to add a character whose lifespan is arbitrarily cut short through no fault of her own.
Which is where my umbrage comes from. The resolution to Firefly's arc is some vague and deeply overwritten nonsense about how she has to "just live", sandwiched between a bunch of metaphors about light/darkness and a hamfisted callback to one of Kafka's lines as a playable character.
So, I don't believe in 'potential'. Unless a creative comes out and says "I wanted X to be more", I just don't believe in it. A work is a work, it is what it is, and focusing on what it could've been is a total non-starter to me.
With that fresh on your screen, though, I'm somewhat disappointed that Penacony squandered the potential of Firefly's character as a vessel to transmit its own themes. In the end she isn't much more than a decent Destruction unit and a character whose entire legacy is the writers trying to bait you into falling for a new girlfriend character, as if March 7th hasn't been there the entire time.
Ultimately, the Aventurine segments of 2.1 and the Sunday parts of 2.2 are still the best written part of this arc because they're the parts which directly engage with what's actually being written, rather than writing around itself in a weird ouroboros of nouns.
Look, if you know me on a personal level, "the male characters are the best parts of this story" should be a massive red flag.
Penacony is over now, at least. Unlike the average FFXIV expansion cycle, I don't need to be disappointed for two straight years. That's a silver lining, and a benefit of Mihoyo's tight patch schedule.
That said, my opinion of 2.3 isn't entirely negative. Two entirely new game modes is great, and Apocalyptic Shadow is already becoming a great way for me torealize how much of a dolphin I am use a lot of my teams to their fullest. Hurray, content Black Swan can do without overdamaging everything!
Which is the one benefit of live service storytelling, at least. One I've noticed both with this patch and with my return to FFXIV not as a story player but as a content tourist cutscene skipper: It's a lot easier to brush off the narrative being shit when you can open up a menu and have actual honest-to-god fun.
With live service games, this effect has been brought to the medium of videogames! Hurray!
I was relatively fond of the moment-to-moment of Penacony. I liked all the worldbuilding in 2.0 and the first reveal of how creepy the "real" Dreamscape is still sticks with me. 2.1 and 2.2 were great ruminations on Nihilism (I'm noting a pattern in my writing...) that, surprisingly for a big-budget gacha, were willing to approach it from the angle of people who weren't in a position of power as well as someone with a chronic condition. Also the character writing was phenomenal, so much so that my character-loving brain and my meta-whore brain often got to pull together in harmony.
The environments were beautiful and, after relatively straightforward encounters on Jarilo and the Luofu, Mihoyo took off the limiters and delivered much more enjoyable encounters that weren't as easy to unga-bunga. Music was wonderful too, it was nice to see a company tackled "Jazz inspired" in a way that wasn't just "we want the Persona 5 market".
But if you're familiar with how I write you're probably aware by now that I'm very rigid most of the time, and with low-star reviews there's usually a pittance of praise before I go all in. Well, in the same way I found Penacony to be predictable when I didn't want it to be, I too am going to meet your expectations and nothing more.
True to the opening, there were parts of Penacony I very much didn't like, but omitted them from any discussion about the arc because I was under the impression that they'd either be addressed directly, or at least expanded on.
In 2.0 I wasn't really fond of the Firefly stuff, feeling that it went a bit too hard on the character shilling in ways that call to mind the uncomfortable shit FFXIV keeps doing with G'raha Tia. Similarly, I felt the reveal of Robin's murder came out of nowhere and had little weight for both the player and the protagonists given that she had a grand total of, what, two appearances beforehand?
2.2 comes along after the inoffensive 2.1 and it goes back to the Firefly-is-your-bestie stuff, while also forcing Robin into the narrative in ways that frankly feel out of character for this game? She doesn't really get an introduction or anything resembling development, she's just there and helps out at the finale. Her brother Sunday, at the time of writing an NPC, steals the spotlight.
But there's also a moment near the end of 2.2 where, upon realizing you're in a fakeout good ending, the path to the actual final boss occurs in a brief cutscene, and also someone tells you that Firefly died off-screen. Oh and once it's done you find out Aventurine somehow escaped from the Nihility, which is wrapped up in of all things a missable text message. (Argenti saved him... What?)
I was willing to forgive all of this because the core was mostly solid, and for 2.2 especially I assumed 2.3 would wrap it all up.
Unfortunately, it doesn't wrap much of anything up.
Just to walk this through back-to-front, I really don't like that Aventurine was given so much focus in 2.1 and his status as "basically doomed" in the Nihility's embrace highlighted so cleanly at the end, only for him to get rescued off-screen by a random gay guy that players can potentially never meet if they skip the Washtopia quest. I figured they wouldn't explicitly kill a popular character, but if Tingyun can exist in will-she-won't-she limbo for a full year then Aventurine can play cards with himself in Sin City Limbo.
Similarly, I'd assumed that him abruptly being pulled out of Cumbernauld- sorry, limbo, was meant to signify that he'd have a role in the upcoming IPC vs Penacony negotiations that've hung over the entire arc like a Sword of Damocles, but he doesn't. He's just... there.
And speaking of the IPC stuff, it feels at odds with both the story before it and also the characters participating in it.
Jade (one of the Ten Stonehearts, Topaz and Aventurine's coworker/elder) appears and after a lot of vague infodumping to catch inattentive players up to speed, she browbeats a rather alarming Greedy Merchant stereotype into submission, getting a 30% stake in the Penacony corporation and giving 5% to the Astral Express.
That last bit is what I take issue with. In the last IPC-centric storyline involving Topaz, it's made super clear that Himeko is merely neutral towards the IPC and is entirely willing to sabotage their operations for the benefit of any potential victims. It's somewhat strange and - dare I say the forbidden words - out of character for her to just blindly go "Oh yup sure this deal is fine :)" and end the conflict.
That all of the exchanges leading up to her assisting in the capitalistic colonialism of Penacony are off-screen doesn't help. Penacony has a bit of a problem with off-screening vital things and it's at its worst in this patch. It's doubly strange because Penacony was the arc where Mihoyo wisely decided to switch the playable focus over to other characters at crucial plot moments, yet a lot of the stuff involving Himeko and her motivations is just left to the player's imagination.
I single Himeko out because we're a year and change into HSR's lifespan yet, of the Astral Express crew, she's the most flimsy in terms of actual character. I had assumed that, given Penacony was the first arc where she took to the field, we'd get something from her, but no. Off-screen. Yay.
But also just, on a narrative level, this resolution to the IPC stuff isn't very satisfying? As Penacony unfolded it became more and more apparent that a lot of the present-day issues affecting the region stem from the IPC's abuse and tyranny during their initial control over the region. The threat of the IPC even setting foot in Penacony again has, on-screen, several relevant characters go "nuh uh" and plot their downfall. The very notion that Penacony would fall under their ownership again is framed as a huge no-no, a total failstate for the story.
And the Astral Express just let it happen? They encourage it, even. It's an incredibly strange outcome for a game where there's an entire side story about how badly you need to oppose an IPC takeover of Jarilo.
Moving on from that though, this patch goes really hard on the "Firefly is your girlfriend :)" stuff that I found nauseating the last few times, and to be honest? I wish they'd killed her. Not out of spite or malice or whatever, but because the fakeout death she gets is the saddest and wimpiest attempt at drama I've seen since amateur fanfiction.
To wit: Sparkle appears at the end and goes "Muahahaha I planted 999 bombs" which locks you into 5 minute segment where there are far too many jokes, before she reveals there's a 1000th bomb. You go up to Firefly, she gives a very teary-eyed speech about what it means to live with a chronic illness, and flies up into the sky.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand then Sparkle appears to say "nuh uh it's just fireworks she's fine :)". She pushes the Trailblazer off an airship, who is then saved by Firefly. She carried them bridal-style into the sky, they hold hands and twirl, and...
It's cringe. I don't have anything else to say about it. It's cringe. It's embarassing. It made me turn away from my monitor in shame. That one Folding Ideas clip played in my mind, bass boosted and with the volume up.
I wager other people who, like me, were cynical about Firefly will come to the same conclusion, but for me the wedge issue isn't so much the Firefly shilling so much as it is the relative childishness of how this is all written.
On Jarilo-VI and the Xianzhou Luofu, there are two companion quests which start off innocently enough but ultimately turn into haunting and nakedly vulnerable depictions of people with leftover grief. There are no happy resolutions or well-earned smiles, because the people they love didn't die for any good reason, they just died. I know the target audience for this game is teenagers with no impulse control and adults who're a bit too eager to say the word "waifu" (as with most gachas), but these are good quests and they're not the only ones to be so frank about human ugliness.
And, just to preface everything: I do like Firefly. I think it's nice to see some chronic illness representation in a genre where the closest we get is pale people who sometimes cough. As an extension of Penacony's ruminations on the meaning of not only Life but what it means To Live, I think it was great of Mihoyo to add a character whose lifespan is arbitrarily cut short through no fault of her own.
Which is where my umbrage comes from. The resolution to Firefly's arc is some vague and deeply overwritten nonsense about how she has to "just live", sandwiched between a bunch of metaphors about light/darkness and a hamfisted callback to one of Kafka's lines as a playable character.
So, I don't believe in 'potential'. Unless a creative comes out and says "I wanted X to be more", I just don't believe in it. A work is a work, it is what it is, and focusing on what it could've been is a total non-starter to me.
With that fresh on your screen, though, I'm somewhat disappointed that Penacony squandered the potential of Firefly's character as a vessel to transmit its own themes. In the end she isn't much more than a decent Destruction unit and a character whose entire legacy is the writers trying to bait you into falling for a new girlfriend character, as if March 7th hasn't been there the entire time.
Ultimately, the Aventurine segments of 2.1 and the Sunday parts of 2.2 are still the best written part of this arc because they're the parts which directly engage with what's actually being written, rather than writing around itself in a weird ouroboros of nouns.
Look, if you know me on a personal level, "the male characters are the best parts of this story" should be a massive red flag.
Penacony is over now, at least. Unlike the average FFXIV expansion cycle, I don't need to be disappointed for two straight years. That's a silver lining, and a benefit of Mihoyo's tight patch schedule.
That said, my opinion of 2.3 isn't entirely negative. Two entirely new game modes is great, and Apocalyptic Shadow is already becoming a great way for me to
Which is the one benefit of live service storytelling, at least. One I've noticed both with this patch and with my return to FFXIV not as a story player but as a content tourist cutscene skipper: It's a lot easier to brush off the narrative being shit when you can open up a menu and have actual honest-to-god fun.
A conclusion and an epilogue as a heartful love letter for all the people that enjoyed Penacony. Penacony was pretty dense and this patch just goes like, "heh, I hope you enjoyed your ride." Indeed it was a nice ride.
Psychonauts 2
2021
I would love nothing more than to write dozens of paragraphs on why I adored this game, but to avoid spoilers and sum it all up easily, it completely warped my perspective on what I thought video games were capable of (in a positive way.) Both from a storytelling and gameplay perspective.
While there have been stories in games that I've enjoyed, it's rare for one to grip me. Even Psychonauts 2's main overarching plot doesn't do much for me. However, there was one execution of a character that sincerely touched me in a way that made me rethink how I go about my own life, and I've since been living for the better after experiencing it. The world the character belonged to was by far the most visually and thematically striking to me and it covered topics that I didn't realize I struggled internally with and helped me combat them. While the dark comedy of the first game is heavily traded for a more sincere exploration of mental health, I personally think it paid off, and I hope this game and any of its character-driven worlds touch others the way it did to me.
I do have my gripes with some story elements, such as what's done with the characters from the first game and how they're utilized. But from a pure gameplay standpoint, I will be waiting patiently for years for something to blow me away like Psychonauts 2 did. Nearly 3 years later and my mind is still boggled on how some of its ideas were even executed. It can feel like a standard 3D platforming collect-a-thon at times, but very frequently it will pull the rug out from under you. It feels as though they explore every concept as thoroughly as they can and wrap it up in the most creative ball you can imagine. The tutorial level alone sits rent-free in my mind and will make you fall in love with the game instantly.
Everything from the first game feels improved from the combat, the animation, the writing, the performances, the movement, the sheer ideas, the polish, the open worlds, the smaller worlds, etc. etc.
You owe it to yourself to please play it. And when you do I beg of you to not rush through it like I did. Really enjoy every bit that you can as long as you can because it is worth nearly every minute of your time. I rarely throw the word around but I am more than confident in calling Psychonauts 2 a masterpiece and hope developers over the next decade look to it for inspiration and guidance.
While there have been stories in games that I've enjoyed, it's rare for one to grip me. Even Psychonauts 2's main overarching plot doesn't do much for me. However, there was one execution of a character that sincerely touched me in a way that made me rethink how I go about my own life, and I've since been living for the better after experiencing it. The world the character belonged to was by far the most visually and thematically striking to me and it covered topics that I didn't realize I struggled internally with and helped me combat them. While the dark comedy of the first game is heavily traded for a more sincere exploration of mental health, I personally think it paid off, and I hope this game and any of its character-driven worlds touch others the way it did to me.
I do have my gripes with some story elements, such as what's done with the characters from the first game and how they're utilized. But from a pure gameplay standpoint, I will be waiting patiently for years for something to blow me away like Psychonauts 2 did. Nearly 3 years later and my mind is still boggled on how some of its ideas were even executed. It can feel like a standard 3D platforming collect-a-thon at times, but very frequently it will pull the rug out from under you. It feels as though they explore every concept as thoroughly as they can and wrap it up in the most creative ball you can imagine. The tutorial level alone sits rent-free in my mind and will make you fall in love with the game instantly.
Everything from the first game feels improved from the combat, the animation, the writing, the performances, the movement, the sheer ideas, the polish, the open worlds, the smaller worlds, etc. etc.
You owe it to yourself to please play it. And when you do I beg of you to not rush through it like I did. Really enjoy every bit that you can as long as you can because it is worth nearly every minute of your time. I rarely throw the word around but I am more than confident in calling Psychonauts 2 a masterpiece and hope developers over the next decade look to it for inspiration and guidance.
Banana
2024
Banana, on the surface, is just an incremental meme game that you play for 20 seconds, get the one and only achievement, and then uninstall. There's some basic text and a png of a banana. Every time you click the banana, the text counts up. No upgrades, aesthetics, or anything of note gameplay-wise beyond that.
In reality, the "game" is the Steam marketplace. Every 3 hours you keep the game open, you get a banana in your Steam inventory. Every 18 hours, you get a rare banana. You then trade and sell these on the Steam Marketplace for Steam cash from people who feel tempted to have every banana. It is basically an NFT buying and trading simulator.
All the different bananas are actually created on the game's discord by fans and are given an arbitrary rarity. After 24 hours of having the game open, I have gotten 8 bananas, 3 of them being duplicates, and can sell them off for about 30 cents total. Some people are straight up buying rarer bananas for as much as 200.00+ USD. I will probably keep the game open for a few days on the off chance I get anything people are willing to buy but ultimately, there is nothing beyond that. While I probably should give it 0.5 stars, I can't deny that getting an 8-cent banana for doing literally nothing did bring me more joy than some full games I've played.
In reality, the "game" is the Steam marketplace. Every 3 hours you keep the game open, you get a banana in your Steam inventory. Every 18 hours, you get a rare banana. You then trade and sell these on the Steam Marketplace for Steam cash from people who feel tempted to have every banana. It is basically an NFT buying and trading simulator.
All the different bananas are actually created on the game's discord by fans and are given an arbitrary rarity. After 24 hours of having the game open, I have gotten 8 bananas, 3 of them being duplicates, and can sell them off for about 30 cents total. Some people are straight up buying rarer bananas for as much as 200.00+ USD. I will probably keep the game open for a few days on the off chance I get anything people are willing to buy but ultimately, there is nothing beyond that. While I probably should give it 0.5 stars, I can't deny that getting an 8-cent banana for doing literally nothing did bring me more joy than some full games I've played.
Still Wakes the Deep
2024
A breath of fresh air to the horror genre. I missed the old story-driven horror games. I just love it when a game not only wants to scare you but also tells you a story. This is a beautiful short story that I liked, and I just hope that games like this come out regularly.
Crime O'Clock
2023
DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.
NOTE: I took a break from videogames for a couple of months which explaind the gap in my log dates.
I went in expecting a hidden object game a-la Hidden Folks. I got a linear narrative heavy hidden object game, a weird combination that worked surprisingly well.
You play as a seemingly omniscient being capable of working alongside an AI to re-write events in the past in order to fix anomalies in the space-time continuum created by several seemingly malicious entities that turn out to also be AIs. If all of that sounded confusing, is because it is and as the game goes on you will only keep getting more and more information thrown at you with little to no answers and will be expected to retain all past info in order to make sense of the new one, and with no text log it's hard to keep track of everything. (Maybe taking a 2 month long break in the middle of this game wasn't such a good idea.)
But enough narrative, let's get into the gameplay. You will be tasked with finding a crime in a big sprawling city with many things going on at the same time. And you will then need to follow the culprit, victim, suspects, witnesses and sometimes objects forward and backwards through time in order to piece together what happened and what you can change to fix it. You later get access to further tools like x-ray vision to spruce up the gameplay. There will also be minigames sprinkled throughout. They are not super engaging, but they are not too bothersome to deal with.
You might think it's a map too big for a simple crime, but you will be coming back to all 5 eras to solve multiple craimes in a set order. There is also a mode that lets you freely roam the map in order to find easter egg characters and follow them through the timeline.
All the ares are visually distinct and very appealing. It's incredible how much is happening in each screen at the same time.
I do have to mention that some quests require you find some sigils anywhere on the map with minimal guidance on where to look, and they would be an absolute nightmare if not for the existance of hints. I would in fact recommend to being afraid to use them as they have no penalty other than waiting a few seconds for them to unlock.
The narrative, although convoluted and cofusing, is clear on where it's going and satisfying to end. The AI companion is well written and its growth through the campaign can be easily noticed.
It could have used with a few more songs, as spending so much time with the same one becomes very tiring.
Overall, it's a neat twist on the hidden object formula with a heavy enphasis on storytelling, but searching through the same maps with the same song eventually becomes a bit boring, repetitive and dull. I still recommend it as long as you know what you're getting into.
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.
NOTE: I took a break from videogames for a couple of months which explaind the gap in my log dates.
I went in expecting a hidden object game a-la Hidden Folks. I got a linear narrative heavy hidden object game, a weird combination that worked surprisingly well.
You play as a seemingly omniscient being capable of working alongside an AI to re-write events in the past in order to fix anomalies in the space-time continuum created by several seemingly malicious entities that turn out to also be AIs. If all of that sounded confusing, is because it is and as the game goes on you will only keep getting more and more information thrown at you with little to no answers and will be expected to retain all past info in order to make sense of the new one, and with no text log it's hard to keep track of everything. (Maybe taking a 2 month long break in the middle of this game wasn't such a good idea.)
But enough narrative, let's get into the gameplay. You will be tasked with finding a crime in a big sprawling city with many things going on at the same time. And you will then need to follow the culprit, victim, suspects, witnesses and sometimes objects forward and backwards through time in order to piece together what happened and what you can change to fix it. You later get access to further tools like x-ray vision to spruce up the gameplay. There will also be minigames sprinkled throughout. They are not super engaging, but they are not too bothersome to deal with.
You might think it's a map too big for a simple crime, but you will be coming back to all 5 eras to solve multiple craimes in a set order. There is also a mode that lets you freely roam the map in order to find easter egg characters and follow them through the timeline.
All the ares are visually distinct and very appealing. It's incredible how much is happening in each screen at the same time.
I do have to mention that some quests require you find some sigils anywhere on the map with minimal guidance on where to look, and they would be an absolute nightmare if not for the existance of hints. I would in fact recommend to being afraid to use them as they have no penalty other than waiting a few seconds for them to unlock.
The narrative, although convoluted and cofusing, is clear on where it's going and satisfying to end. The AI companion is well written and its growth through the campaign can be easily noticed.
It could have used with a few more songs, as spending so much time with the same one becomes very tiring.
Overall, it's a neat twist on the hidden object formula with a heavy enphasis on storytelling, but searching through the same maps with the same song eventually becomes a bit boring, repetitive and dull. I still recommend it as long as you know what you're getting into.
Doors: Paradox
2021
DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.
NOTE: I got this game free on Epic so price is not a factor.
I went in expecting some sort of escape room game. I got a point and click diorama solving game that is more akin to puzzle boxes.
The puzzles are never too hard, more like a sequence of finding the next available item and where to use it with the occasional minigame to change the pace. Nonetheless, it was satisfying to see the dioramas unfold and open up more and more crevices with items to use elsewhere.
I did enjoy having to find collectibles "hidden" in each level. They were generally in very visible places, but they were sometimes cleverly hidden and I had to replay a couple of levels to find them. It's worth noting that you can find a collectible and quit the level and it will be saved without having to re-do all the rest, that is very much appreciated. There are 3 collectibles in each level: a blue and red gem, all of which are needed to unlock the final two level for the order and chaos endings respectively; and a scroll with some text.
The scrolls seem to be trying to tell some sort of story, but they are such short pieces of text separated by a whole level that it was hard for me to follow what they were saying. But you do get to choose the ending, so it might be something important like the fate of the world, I'm unsure.
Overall, It's an ok, short and easy puzzle box-like game. Nothing extraordinary, but a good time killer.
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.
NOTE: I got this game free on Epic so price is not a factor.
I went in expecting some sort of escape room game. I got a point and click diorama solving game that is more akin to puzzle boxes.
The puzzles are never too hard, more like a sequence of finding the next available item and where to use it with the occasional minigame to change the pace. Nonetheless, it was satisfying to see the dioramas unfold and open up more and more crevices with items to use elsewhere.
I did enjoy having to find collectibles "hidden" in each level. They were generally in very visible places, but they were sometimes cleverly hidden and I had to replay a couple of levels to find them. It's worth noting that you can find a collectible and quit the level and it will be saved without having to re-do all the rest, that is very much appreciated. There are 3 collectibles in each level: a blue and red gem, all of which are needed to unlock the final two level for the order and chaos endings respectively; and a scroll with some text.
The scrolls seem to be trying to tell some sort of story, but they are such short pieces of text separated by a whole level that it was hard for me to follow what they were saying. But you do get to choose the ending, so it might be something important like the fate of the world, I'm unsure.
Overall, It's an ok, short and easy puzzle box-like game. Nothing extraordinary, but a good time killer.
Thirsty Suitors
2023
Outstanding writing, voice acting, presentation, and animation, in service of a funny and heartfelt story about Indian-American identity, queerness, family, and failed romantic relationships. The "league of not-so-evil exes" premise obviously owes a heavy debt to Scott Pilgrim, but Thirsty Suitors thankfully takes it in a distinct direction. The actual gameplay, on the other hand, is unfortunately rather lacking; at various points, you'll be doing: a QTE-heavy cooking minigame; a vaguely Tony Hawk-esque (but much simpler) skateboarding minigame; or, most prominently, QTE-heavy Mario & Luigi-inspired turn-based RPG battles. None of these three gameplay styles are bad for what they are, but none of them proved fun enough to make me want to engage with them outside what's necessary to complete the main story, which is a shame since there seems to be some additional story scenes tied to side quests involving the various exes. Fortunately, the main story path doesn't take very long to play through, especially if you set the battles to easy difficulty in the options, which I recommend. Mechanics aside, the boss battles with the various exes are also laudable for how they flesh out each ex's personality and backstory not just through mid-battle dialogue, but through excellent, distinctive visual design and animation.
In short: if the story and premise sound appealing to you, Thirsty Suitors is absolutely worth a play. Just don't expect a mechanically deep or engaging experience here.
In short: if the story and premise sound appealing to you, Thirsty Suitors is absolutely worth a play. Just don't expect a mechanically deep or engaging experience here.
5050
2023
Double it and give it to the next person.
Chrono Trigger
2008
One of the absolute best games in the history of the JRPG genre. Chrono trigger is such a high quality game, an incredible party system, flawless music, fulfilling exploration, a great story, and most of all endless replay ability with all the different endings. I wish I could experience it again for the first time, but experiencing it for that 10th time is just as fulfilling.
The game looks amazing, the music is some of the best I've ever heard in any video games, and the characters are all more likeable than the last. The game swaps between Jill's room, where you can learn about the world from the news app, and the bar, where you learn about the world you're in through the characters and their actions. This type of storytelling and worldbuilding is genius for a game such as this.
The game offers some creative liberty when it comes to dealing with clients, sometimes they say something but they actually want something else, or sometimes you can simply mess with them by giving them way too much alcohol.
The only downside to me is that it has been really hard to go back to it to get the other endings, but sometimes I just start it to listen to the music.
The game offers some creative liberty when it comes to dealing with clients, sometimes they say something but they actually want something else, or sometimes you can simply mess with them by giving them way too much alcohol.
The only downside to me is that it has been really hard to go back to it to get the other endings, but sometimes I just start it to listen to the music.
Library of Ruina
2021
This is probably my favorite game out there, but it's also a very hard game to recommend and it's not without flaws, though I will say Project Moon writing absolutely shines here, the themes of the stories are extremely relatable and they're told through loveable characters
I've spent about 3 years thinking about this game and its writing and I don't think its hold on me will fade, at least not for now
I've spent about 3 years thinking about this game and its writing and I don't think its hold on me will fade, at least not for now
An incredible game about relationships, capitalism, colonialism, and what it means to be human.
It's one of the most touching video game stories I've played. A story that can wrap around you like a cozy blanket, only to tear you away and toss you out into the rain.
I don’t normally NG+ games because I have so much to play but I immediately jumped back in the moment credits rolled. There’s a compelling time loop mechanic that provides context for it.
I’m kicking myself for not having played it at launch. If you've had even a slight interest in Twine, I highly recommend it.
It's one of the most touching video game stories I've played. A story that can wrap around you like a cozy blanket, only to tear you away and toss you out into the rain.
I don’t normally NG+ games because I have so much to play but I immediately jumped back in the moment credits rolled. There’s a compelling time loop mechanic that provides context for it.
I’m kicking myself for not having played it at launch. If you've had even a slight interest in Twine, I highly recommend it.