It's Good. It takes the typical turn-based RPG language developed through the 80s and instead uses it as this vehicle to simple create juust enough dungeon-exploring friction to tell a surprisingly expansive story - a story of a party of 4 surprisingly brave people who are climbing a tower that connects multiple worlds. Multiple worlds of other peoples who don't really care about whatever truths this tower contains - they just want to live normal lives.

The heroes reach the pinnacle of 'truth' of their existence, and when faced with a doorway of what 'true existence' might be, they go 'Fuck this heavenly outer space bullshit,' and walk right back down to their town to live out their lives. Roll credits where we step through all these strange moments we just experienced - moments that were told in the fastest cutscenes imaginable, while aware that the audience likely is aware of these situations and tropes from other media and lets us fill in the blanks.

I really like how creative many screens are, and how they take advantage of the gameboy tiles so well, and convey so many space and ideas. The whole < 10 hour JRPG form seems really interesting, the way that time constraint leads to denser levels, denser everything all around.

thinking abt this from the 2014 goty event.. while i appreciate recent fromsoft to various extents, I think this is their last work to really capture my imagination, for all sorts of reasons. (Not to say that their post-DS2 games don't have great moments of their own, but that's a matter for another time). I think the main reason is DS2 feels like the the turning point for their focus more towards a very specific sort of action which interests me less overall.

Dark Souls 2 is honestly a little fucked up! But that's what makes it good. There's more levels than there should be, stuff is stitched together nonsensically..

The game keeps going on for like 10-20 hours more than you'd expect with the dragon islands world, the shrine of amana, etc... each area feels like this dense zone that the creators wanted to share, even if it didn't perfectly fit. It kind of has this texture of madness to it and theming that feel so video gamey but manage to work as a coherent and memorizable world. idk. It honestly has that energy of those sprawling wild adventure platformers (think ecco, kid chameleon, dragon slayer 4..), that feeling of 'why NOT add a sick dark green poison cave with gigantic impossible to see giants'). But it's all kept so densely knit, just wild little idea after idea.

The thing is though, when I do pick it up it feels really hard to get into. I have a lot less patience for the whole 'die and run back and slowly try again' thing since i've already done that a lot in the past. i should just make a cheese build or play with save states or something

fear by way of paul w. s. anderson, for good and ill. i get the potentially misguided sense that timegate wanted to try putting their stamp on fear with an original scenario instead of crafting an epilogue as they had done in extraction point. the issue is that perseus mandate occupies a peculiar niche where it wouldn’t be unfair to accuse it of being more of the same, but at the same time its departures from convention are extremely contentious. PM is home to boss battles which are often pretty rough; arenas are now usually more open which, at its best, transforms fear from a methodical tactical shooter to a game of scrappy, active defence and precision of movement - i certainly felt like i was doing more running and jumping and platforming here in comparison to its predecessors, but many encounters are quite difficult owing to the nature of fears combat design not meshing well with this approach and they often feel one dimensional because the environments don’t give the artificial intelligence fear is known for a chance to shine. i also can’t ascribe much intentionality to it but i felt like this game tries to take reflex mode into account in a way its predecessors don’t? encounters have a way of extending for longer than you think and many of them are genuinely quite difficult without reflex - it’s a sensible subversion of a mechanic that often turned encounters on their head in the previous two games, but in practice it’s less interesting to manage as a resource than you’d hope.

further compounding these issues is that this is often an anonymous and lacklustre expansion. extraction point, while uneven, has some of fears absolute best environmental design and combat scenarios, making good on the taut blend of hyperviolence and horror the base game rooted itself in. extraction point - an expansion which essentially only plunges point man into further and further terror and solitude at breakneck speeds - eschews any semblance of storytelling in the best way, luxuriating in this almost cryostasis-esque willingness to bombard the player with suggestive imagery and creepy stings without much in the way of explanation. climaxes to intervals were often tense and isolating. it was excellent, so it’s what makes the choice to focus on a unique narrative here in perseus mandate a bit misguided, especially with a scenario as superfluous and unimportant as this one. it’s simply missing the forest for the trees - fear is at its best when it’s just a vibes based game where you trot with a shotgun in tow capable of making assailants instantly explode. sometimes there was 2005-ish horror because it kept things tense and interesting, but the storytelling itself is kind of just blase and it’s better served as a means to an end. even worse, fear and extraction point are both games that you look at and go, ‘yep, games didn’t need to look better than this.’ so it’s a goddamn tragedy that perseus mandate represents a massive visual downgrade in lighting and atmosphere - something about it just looks so much cheaper and duller than either of its predecessors.

expected this to be way worse than it actually was based on how people spoke about it but it’s mostly serviceable. scanned a youtube criticism where the guy was like ‘this has too many lame jump scares. fear was at its best when its horror was psychological…’ and i was like damn that’s stupid. i don’t know why everyone treats fears horror as a failing of the game when this is on the re4 wavelength of employing tension for further satisfaction. ‘wahhh how am i supposed to be scared if i can fight back and slow down time and do kung fu’ talk like this resulted in a pretty miserable decade for horror game output. enjoyed the new soundtrack - almost reminiscent of mgs1. if we’re powerscaling fear, perseus mandate guy might be SSS right? guy gets put through the fucking ringer and asks no questions, just shuts up and gets the job done, all without the benefit of point man’s genetic enhancements.

Went back to my first rate magical girl certification.

I guessed repeatedly playing the first level was the fastest way to get stardust. Got my time down to 13.00 seconds. But later on i switched to doing the night sky of chaos. You can beat it in under a minute and get over 200000 stardust each run. I figured between menu navigation and loading screens its faster way to make money and its more interesting to replay.

Uh, yeah. Good game. I very rarely 100% games, but something about it compelled me.

Sonic embodies the spirit of the Wii U with an adventure that seems interesting but ultimately doesn’t execute as well as you’d hope.

Many people say “Super Sonic Galaxy” but in terms of tone and presentation it actually reminds me more of Super Mario 3D Land and to a lesser extent Sonic 3D Blast. This game feels like it came from a different universe where Sonic Xtreme took off instead of Sonic Adventure which makes it notable enough to at least check out. The movement options give you lots of room to experiment as you explore the levels, but sadly mission rankings apply to Time Trials where only speed (and not score) matters. It is a missed opportunity to get the most out of the parkour and multi attack systems.

Despite not quite coming together the game looks gorgeous and stands out from all other 3D Sonic games. The story is good for what it needs to be, introducing classic villain Zavok and including great lines like “These animals are quite underwhelming. Next time, bring better animals.” The game actually uses the game pad a lot for things as essential as the basic tutorial, so I would not recommend playing the Steam port if you can avoid it.

I would recommend you play this and try to at least get through level 2-1 if you have a Wii U still hooked up to see if you like it.