i need to beat 12 games before the end of the year to reach my goal of 100 games .. gonna list them here and update when i beat them (spoilers ahead!!)
my conditions for a game to be 'loggable' are:
- 2+ hours in length (my playthrough)
- has some kind of story/narrative with a conclusion
Slayers X (completed 3/12/23)
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (completed 4/12/23)
Blaster Master Zero (completed 5/12/23)
A Highland Song (completed 6/12/23)
Jusant (completed 12/12/23)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty (completed 15/12/23)
Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations (completed 19/12/23)
As Dusk Falls (completed 21/12/23)
Sagebrush (completed 22/12/23)
Mothmen 1966 (completed 25/12/23)
Scorn (completed 27/12/23)
Slay the Princess (completed 29/12/23)
BONUS: A Hand With Many Fingers (completed 6/12/23)
Slayers X
Decided to play this because its like a sequel/spinoff? of Hypnospace Outlaw (which i really liked alot). I don't really have much to say about it, it was pretty fun. I haven't played any classic boomer shooters so it's influences are pretty lost on me. It reminded me alot of POSTAL Brain Damaged (probably because they both fall into the category of 'boomer shooter homage game thats a spinoff of a series that isn't usually a boomer shooter'). It's a unique idea to have us play through a game and characterise the developer as we go through. Only other thing I can think of that does this is 'The Beginners Guide'. Guess this one is kinda different since most of the characterisation for Zane is done in Hypnospace Outlaw. Soundtrack is supposed to be parodying nu metal i think but most of the songs are so good that i would put them in my playlistBig fan of how all the levels are just normal settings. You go through a suburb, a trailer park and a fairground. Kinda reflective of how the character making the game is like 16 so he probably based the levels off of places he lives near. Wish there was more Hypnospace references/links and the final 2 levels weren't the best . level design went from being super open and fluid to being in these enclosed/precarious spaces where you're fighting these wolf enemies with rocket launchers that do like 50% of ur health. was extremely tough until the final boss which was fun, a little too easy if you use the right guns.
6/10 probably the best game set in boise
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Naughty Dog finally realised that Nathan Drake is boring. They might be 4 games late, but when they finally did it resulted in their best uncharted entry by far. You play as Chloe Frazer in this one, and she fits into the structure way better than Nathan did. It's super cool that she went from being a generic sexualised character in Uncharted 2 to a more fleshed out one than Nathan in this game. It's great to finally see women in video games chilling out and having fun (sometimes). I also really liked seeing Chloe and Nadine's relationship develop. Having two characters that don't initially like eachother begin to get to know eachother better as the game unfolds keeps things engaging. It feels more involving as the player too, you get to play through virtually every interaction these two characters have ever had. Gameplay also feels like it's driven by a narrative i can actually support? It's no longer a random white dude stealing artifacts from other countries for his own gain; instead you play as a character with cultural connections to the country they're in and their motivations aren't capitalistic. Chloe is looking for 'the tusk' (this game's big treasure) in order to preserve it, and complete her father's life's work. It also breaks from the boring uncharted 'the treasure has been lost!! The temple is collapsing!!' trope, instead climaxing with a sequence with actual narrative stakes. It's also the hardest gameplay portion in anything i've ever played? it's like 45 minutes of massive setpieces. everything on the train is peak uncharted for me.
more than anything this game feels like a reflection on the past uncharted games, a much needed overhaul. Whenever I think about uncharted it has this weird feeling of colonisation to it that the games never really address; you're always playing as a white man stealing ancient artefacts from other countries (not to mention the exoticism and racism in the first two games). Getting rid of Nathan Drake was the best way to move on from this. Gameplay is virtually identical to uncharted 4 (so it's great) but paired with some more likable characters and better level design Lost Legacy blows it out of the water. Hope they never make another one of these, the final scene where they say they're gonna donate the treasure to the ministry of culture feels like a fitting end for the francise; it addresses, corrects and moves on from its faults.
8/10 play this one
Blaster Master Zero
ezelf told me i should play this. platformers arent usually my kind of thing but i liked the gameplay variation in this and it was nice and short. i do NOT like backtracking/metroidvanias that much (unless its hollow knight) so i didn't do any of the backtracking to get the true ending which is apparently really cool. The music in this rocks and I like the frog alot. also being able to play in/out of the car was a really cool mechanic that i wish they utilised more. this game could have used its systems to build some badass puzzles probably. also thought the upgrades/weapon variation was a nice addition, kept things fresh.
i thought the narrative and the characters both SUCKED and didnt care about it at all but i guess people dont play these for that? at least there was a frog in it i guess. characters were just bland. i dont even remember what they looked like or were called and i beat it literally 3 minutes ago. game also had some super annoying stealth segments and i didnt really care for that water level
this game is also like absurdly easy for the first 90%? i breezed through every boss and combat sequence without getting hit once and only had trouble on the last two areas. final boss also died in like 3 seconds for some reason. the electricity weapon and the last one on the list are both extremely unbalanced and make the game baby mode if you use them. sucks because some of the bosses had really cool designs but i killed them before they could even do one attack.
5/10 dis was fun thanks ezelf
A Hand With Many Fingers
Howlongtobeat.com said this game was 90 minutes long so i thought i would easily take at least two hours to beat it but i got to the end in 40 minutes? which means i can't log it on backloggd since it didn't take 2 hours so this one doesn't count towards the 12 i guess. Gonna be swapping it for A Highland Song. Wanted to write about it anyways since I liked it alot. In this one you only have a pinboard, a map and access to a large archive of newpaper clippings and documents. It's pretty similar to 'Her Story' in the archival organisation aspects but instead approaches the format from a phsyical perspective, while 'Her Story' has the player navigate a digital archive. Cameron kunzelman writes about the open interpretiveness of this game in The World is Born from Zero (which also has my favorite piece of writing about the last of us in it). the interpretiveness/lack of structure to this one was probably my favorite part, I really felt like i was feeling around in the dark for most of the game and didn't know 100% if i was looking in the right places or finding the right documents so it still felt extremely satisfying to find the right name in the right drawer. The interpretiveness of gameplay is applied to all aspects of the gameplay, and looking through the steam activity page it was fun to see how differently everyone else laid out their pinboards. It would have been way cooler if the pinboard in Alan Wake 2 was more like this one. They also manage to build a surprising amount of tension for how minimalistic the visuals are? At one point the phone rings as you're descending into the creepy archive basement and after that I felt as if someone was watching me the entire game. There's some other similar cool moments but I dont want to spoil anything.
If anything the only real problem I had with this one was it's length.. I really thought i was just getting started and it just ended abruptly. There was definitely some intentionality to the abruptness of the ending but it left me unsatisfied overall unfortuntately. I hate to critique games for their length but this is a rare case where I think it definitely could have benefited from a little extra content. Still overall very enjoyable and I had fun with it.
6/10 dis was fun thanks cameron kunzelman
A Highland Song
Unfortunately rushed through this one thinking that I was required to. Game starts by telling u that u have 7 in-game days to reach the end, so I skipped past some stuff I would have looked at otherwise. After I played I read a review where they say the goal is self-imposed, and you can take as much time as you want to reach the lighthouse. sucks that the game isn't clearer with this, but I guess that would go against what they're trying to say with the mechanic.
Overall I really enjoyed the gameplay aspects of this, thought the environmental grounding was similar to Death Stranding - a 6 foot drop in any other game would likely be a small task, but A Highland Song asks you to make your way down the drop carefully. If anything I wish the game was more committed to this Death Stranding approach, because the gameplay is unfortunately shallow in some aspects of it's movement. It never really goes further than climbing up/down a slope. However, the use of this attention to detail directed at environmental traversal grounds the experience in the Highlands, making Moira's journey feel like a feasible path. Also liked the way they utilised the 2D medium - felt like I was plotting my own route through the highlands. Definitely has a significant level of replay value to it, and i want to play it again in the future. The rythm game sequences were a nice addition - the soundtrack was extremely fitting. Really wish that Oxenfree 2 employed the same style of exploratory open world gameplay that this game does - think it would really benefit from it. In retrospect I feel like me skipping alot of the content of the game made the highlands feel more fleshed out and alive? Maybe that was the dev's intention with the time limit. I walked past alot of buildings and statues that were out of reach without making any attempt to reach them - definitely fleshed out the amount of content I think is in the game right now through exclusion. This feeling of wholeness contributes pretty nicely to the feeling of the highlands being mysterious and kind of magical that is built up throughout.
Was a little confused at the ending, probably because I skipped alot of the game content :( but hopefully on a second playthrough things will start coming together for me. Also someone needs to get the voice actor who recorded the opening monologue a better mic because that shit suckkked
6/10 want 2 play this again
Jusant
Fundamentally, to climb is to solve a puzzle using your body. You need to know where to balance your feet, where to put your hands next. The position of each of your limbs must be considered. In order to conquer a challenging ascent it needs to be studied; deconstructed to a pattern that you can then attempt to execute.
Despite the fact that the act of climbing is so aligned with the act of puzzle solving, it's an action that's often overlooked in video games. If present, climbing is typically a chore. Games like God of War (2018), Jedi: Fallen Order and (most notably) the Uncharted franchise use climbing as padding, only acting as a way to give the player a brief break between combat sequences. It's unfortunate that climbing has become so devoid of gamification in modern experiences, being closer to watching a loading screen than solving a puzzle.
Jusant understands the parallels between climbing and puzzle-solving. The player controls the grip of each hand seperately with the left and right triggers, having to reach out for each hold individually. You're also provided with a rope and 3 pitons to assist your ascent. Despite the fact that this set of tools seems limited, it allows for the game to create an extremely engaging gameplay system. At one point, I needed to get to a hold that was far out of my reach, and I had used all of my pitons. In order to clear this gap I climbed down to the last piton I had placed, took it out of the wall and placed it in a higher location. I then rappelled down from the piton, gained some momentum by swinging and leapt to the hold. Just like an actual climb, this sequence was reminiscent of a puzzle. Sequences like this highlight the major difference between Jusant and games like Uncharted 4 (which also provides the player with a rope and pitons). The difference is the amount of control the player has over their climbing. The piton in Uncharted 4 can only be used on specific walls, and can only be used as an additional hold to reach higher locations. The piton in Jusant can be placed on any surface. It can act as a security net, a location for the player to descend, swing or wallrun from. To capture the essence of climbing, it's vital that a set of holds should be treated as a sort of sandbox puzzle for the player to solve on their own terms; not a sequence where the player jumps from hold to hold with no thought like Uncharted.
Uncharted's solution to keeping it's bland climbing sequences engaging is by emphasising the danger of Nathan Drake's position. A rooftop tile may come loose as Nathan hangs from it, causing him to fall and grab something else. Jusant omits sequences like this completely, keeping things methodical and pretty calming. I think Jusant shows alot of restraint to not include sequences like this, and it only further emphasises it's understanding of the process of climbing. The way the player can 'lose' is by failing to maintain their stamina or not keeping their hands on a hold. It would have been easy to try and increase the difficulty of the game by creating a sense of danger, but to only allow failure through the player's own faults is both calming and similar to real-life bouldering. (I fell off of a climbing wall in the summer and sprained my ankle :( because I ran out of stamina by the time I reached the final hold).
This game also has a really nice creature in it. Kind of looks like a frog? Small blue thing. You can hug it and play with it by pressing left on the D-pad. very cool. I would play with him alot. You can also let it sit on your head and sing. I think its supposed to point you in the right direction or something? I would just let it sit up there because I liked it. It can also make vines grow for you to climb. Each chapter introduces some kind of new mechanic like this, whether it be vines, heat or wind, it keeps gameplay engaging. The sound design is also extremely calming. You can pick up these shells that kind of remind me of the 'shivers' perk from Disco Elysium. The shells allow you to hear the actions of previous inhabitants. The scrawling of pencil on paper, the creaking of a chair. The soundtrack in this one also rocks.
My problems with this game are pretty minor. I didn't really like consuming the narrative through notes scattered around the levels, and had trouble remembering all the names mentioned. Wish they'd utilised environmental storytelling more as there was certain parts where you could construct a narrative through what was around you that were way cooler than the notes. At one point you can find what looks like a water transport system where tanks are being transported from higher on the ascent to the lower areas. One of these tanks is open, and you can see it's just full of sandbags. Really liked how this hinted at something more going on. I also got stuck on geometry pretty frequently but it wasn't that annoying. Some of the level design was also kind of weird? I would come across areas that definitely seemed like the right place to be only to find out after 20 minutes of aimlessly walking around that I actually needed to go back on myself and swing around a corner.
Games would be so much better if they approached climbing in the same way this does. Once triple-a games figure out they can put gameplay in the sequences that don't have fighting in them maybe we'll finally see something like this in God of War.
8/10 need a plush of the blue creature
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
I just wrote like 750 words about this game and when I went to save them my chrome closed and deleted everything so this probably isn’t gonna be very readable or concise because I’m just going to try to rewrite what I wrote before. My friend ezelf has been telling me to play this game for like 3 years now because he said it was the most ‘maxpilled’ thing he could think of and he was probably right. I played up until the Fatman boss fight in like April on an emulator and lost my save file : ( so I’ve been reluctant to restart the game since then. This was probably because I wasn’t a massive fan of the first act of this game, I originally found the backtracking during the bomb defusal sequence to be extremely tedious but in hindsight it’s extremely effective at teaching the player the layout of the Big Shell. By the second act snake would be like ‘meet me in strut F!’ and I would just make my way there. Traversing familiar space benefits the narrative pretty massively too once it kicks it up a gear. I think its much easier to track the complexities of what’s going on when I already know where I am and where I’m going gameplay wise. Really liked how many tools you have at your disposal. Leads to a lot of Kojima ‘smoke a cigarette to reveal the lasers’ moments which are always fun. You’ll try something stupid like getting rid of some bugs by spraying them with the coolant you were given to freeze bombs like 4 hours ago and it’ll actually work. Think these weird puzzle/problems also go a long way in regards to immersing the player. They prompt you to consider and maximize the use of every item in your inventory, like a real covert agent would (probably also due to hardware limitations but I’m gonna pretend it isn’t). Usually when I play an older game I find there to be a problem with illogical puzzle solutions? Or just a lack of explanation surrounding certain mechanics (like that dumb puzzle with the juice in Silent Hill 2). This game avoids this problem completely by letting you call the colonel or Snake whenever you get stuck. It’s cool that they make you think about who would have more intel in specific situations. Need intel about your mission? Call the colonel. Need more info about combat? Call Snake. If I played this game when I was younger I probably still would have got stuck in like 20 minutes regardless.Playing as Raiden is great, really liked the subversion at the start where you think you’re gonna be playing as snake. Raiden’s perspective and the characters around him seemingly knowing more maintains this feeling of something greater going on that the player doesn’t know about, which makes each plot twist and reveal significantly more impactful. There’s a level of mystery to literally everything in this game, including Raiden. It was fun to theorize about what was actually going on with him as I played. For like 70% of the game I thought the events unfolding were just a combat simulation (I guess I was kinda right). You can also tell that Kojima is capitalizing off of the fact you’re playing as a character with limited information because you’re told the intimate technological history, components and functions of each piece of technology you encounter. I do not need the colonel to explain the history of the sneaking suit for 5 minutes!! Put that in an optional codex or something!!
Big fan of pretty much all the characters in here too. Snake is just as cool as in MGS1, and even more mysterious. You can never really figure out where he stands in regards to the narrative, or if he’s even the real solid snake. They even coax you into not trusting him a couple times. and he has infinite ammo. Fatman’s design is awesome and I love how he just roller-skates around and drinks a little martini as he fights you. Makes sense in hindsight that he’s just testing your abilities because he clearly does not give a fuck about fighting you. “Laugh, and become fat!”. Fortune’s gun being twice the size of her is also extremely hard, alongside the theme that would play whenever she showed up. Also there’s just an actual vampire in this game as far as I can tell? He’s in here for no reason and gets shot in the head at one point and is fine. Doesn’t elaborate. Extremely cool. My least favorite character is probably Solidus unfortunately. I think there’s a reason I had heard of Liquid Snake, Solid Snake and Big Boss before playing any of these games and not him. It’s because he’s kind of bland, but I guess that makes sense based on what’s revealed at the end. He’s a weapon that’s been manufactured, after all. He never got to choose his name.
Narratively this game somehow confronts concepts of legacy, self, the flow of information, technological advancement, identity, war and probably 10 other things im forgetting about without being incoherent. Truly a feat how much information they managed to fit into this narrative, and there’s a fun game alongside it too??! The issues surrounding the overproduction of content and AI are so much more topical today than they were in 2001. This game somehow became more relevant as time progressed. Media is supposed to do the opposite!! It’s also surprising philosophical for a game that was released in 2001. I really love the concept of DNA not including everything about us, and that it’s our responsibility to pass down what makes us human. Snake’s final monologue about art is probably something I’m going to think about a lot in the future when I’m consuming/producing media. I haven’t read any analysis of this yet so I’ll probably expand on this in the future once my thoughts are more coherent. Just wanted to write this as soon as possible so I didn’t forget anything.
10/10 only a matter of time before the exact events of this game unfold and people start worshipping kojima like a prophet
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations
"Everyone on the planet is an accomplice to something. In this case, it's murder."
When I was around 10 years old I went to my local game store with my dad and asked for something along the lines of 'A detective game for the DSi where you gather clues at the crime scene and then prosectute the criminal in court'. I'm sure I must have, somehow, seen gameplay of one of the Phoenix Wright games at some point and was attempting to describe that. Instead of giving me a Phoenix Wright game, the staff member I asked gave me a copy of 'Cate West: The Vanishing Files' (which SUCKS. it looked like this). I think if I had instead been given a copy of Ace Attorney that day, It would have been my favorite game of all time. It probably still would be. I really love this series, but whenever I play them all I can think about is how much more I would have loved them when I was younger. I probably would have never finished any of them though, and the ends of these games are always the best.
Trials and Tribulations is the final game in the original AA series directed by Shu Takumi, marking the end of the 'first trilogy' in my mind. I think it's a shame this game isn't the last one they ever made with the original cast of characters, as it seems to act as a fitting conclusion to all of their character arcs. It's crazy how much more depth this game has than the first one; it really shows how far the series has developed if you compare case 1-4 with 3-5. Case 1-4 has you facing off against a scooby-doo-level villain, Manfred Von Karma. (thanks for reading!! heres a steam key for Disco Elysium: 9W5E7-MN65M-W3DNY . DM me if u claim this!!) He's just evil for the sake of it. By 3-5, you're attempting to prosecute Godot, a man who only killed in order to save Phoenix's best friend, Maya. His motives lie in denial and redemption, with him ultimately confessing that his actions were nothing more than a self-centered act of projection. Usually, confetti falls and the crowd cheers when a case is completed. No confetti falls when Godot is prosecuted. It's a bittersweet end, and calls into question the place of Phoenix's morals in regards to the Justice System. It would have been easy for this series to remain nothing more than a rinse-and-repeat mystery game with no depth, and I'm glad that isn't the case.
The writers and translation team did a great job here, this game is hilarious. Godot is always so over-the-top, Phoenix will present some seemingly solid evidence only for it to get shot down by an extensive coffee analogy. Virtually every returning character is in this game too. I think I would struggle to pick a favorite character from this franchise. If I made a tier list then 90% of them would be in S. They're all extremely unique and likable in their own ways.
One main critique I see of PW:T&T is it's lack of gameplay development in comparison to the first two games. Since PW:AA, the only new gameplay mechanic to be introduced was the Magnamata in PW:JFA which allows you to see if a character is lying. I don't really see the lack of gameplay evolution as an issue as it's clear the focus was instead on refining and improving the systems they had in place. In the first game, investigation sequences felt like searching for a set of triggers to advance. In T&T I would look forward to these segments, as they feel significantly less bare-bones here. They truly perfected the investigation/court gameplay formula with this one, allowing them to be more experimental with their writing, which is also at it's best here.
This is probably also my favorite video game soundtrack of all time? Every track is so good. "Objection!" "Telling the Truth" and "Pressing Persuit - Cornered" are all so good they would distract me from the gameplay. Godot's theme is also great - it captures both his mysterious allure and his sorrow at the same time - A common theme for all the tracks here. They all have an undertone of sadness to them, pairing well with the themes present.
Turnabout Memories
This is probably the best 'tutorial' case out of the 3 games - it provides some good backstory for Mia and Phoenix, and acts as a great introduction for Delilah. My favorite gimmick with PW cases is having no idea how they're gonna spin it to make the suspect, who seems to have been caught red-handed, actually be innocent. It's even better when they manage to do this without an investigation sequence, they feel alot more punchy. Glad theres only a few of these shorter cases throughout though, I prefer the variation invesigation provides. Playing as Mia was also refreshing and this is the case where that guy says 'My hemorrhoids are doing the harlem shake' so points for that too.
The Stolen Turnabout
This case is great - I really liked investigating something other than a murder for once. Alot of standout characters here, Ron DeLite and Luke Atmey are both really fun. Twists are great, but I had to follow a tutorial for some of the cross-examinations because they were so hard. This is the only case I had to check a tutorial for too :( .
Recipe for Turnabout
My least favorite. It's very forgettable, I don't care about any of the characters. The twists here feel more frustrating than anything, It's less of a turnabout and more of a 'trying to explain something that's extremely obvious'. I had put it together by the end of the first court segment (They virtually show you a picture of who's guilty) so it was frustrating to have to wait to present certain evidence. There's also a comic relief gay stereotype character. Lots of weenies though, probably like more than 100 on screen at one point.
Turnabout Beginnings
A great example of the typical PW form being deviated from, as the accused commits suicide in the courtroom, cutting the case short. As the games go on the cases try to provide variation by having Maya or Edgeworth be the accused, having the killer be the prosecution etc. I think this case provides a significantly more impactful variation of the typical formula in the way it disrupts the typical flow of gameplay. Sure, sometimes you're restricted to a specific area for certain investigations but theres never any narrative reasoning for this. Pairing a narrative event with a change in the gameplay like this makes it feel significantly more impactful and unexpected. One of the most memorable cases in the series. It's nice to see Mia's first case, and finally get some information on the identity of the mysterious Godot. Also acts as a great prelude to the best case in any of the games, which is
Bridge to the Turnabout
Easily my favorite case in any of the games. It's a true crescendo, bringing together characters and plot elements from a wide variety of previous cases. It's extremely satisfying to see everything come together here. One of the only cases that seems unapproachable at the start, with so much going on that it takes five (!!) court sessions to come to a conclusion. The true nature of the crime remains illusive until the very end, and the twist reveal is probably also my favorite from any case. Questions from the first game resurface and are finally answered, theres like 5 twists, Larry is in it, Edgeworth and Franziska go head-to-head in the courtroom and so much other fun stuff happens in this one that it's easily the best. Also has a surprising amount of depth narratively, which is what I mentioned earlier. Part of me wishes this was the final game in the series and they never made another one, but maybe my opinion will change once i play the 4th game.
9/10 if i played this as a kid i probably would have played resident evil 10 years earlier too. i hate that employee that gave me a copy of cate west
As Dusk Falls
If I ever wanted to introduce games to someone who doesn't really engage with/play them (like my Grandma or something) I think As Dusk Falls would probably be my best option. The devs definitely knew this, because the game has co-op options where you and family/friends vote between choices on your phones. It's also nicely divided into six one-hour long segments, so it can easily be consumed like a TV Show. If there was a spectrum of games-that-are-almost-tv-shows As Dusk Falls would probably fall inbetween Bandersnatch and The Walking Dead. It really pushes the edge between film and video games- definitely one of the most minimal-gameplay games I've ever played. Gameplay is limited to QTEs, brief environmental interaction sequences (environmental interaction mentioned!!! i love environmental interaction!!) and story/dialogue choices. The QTEs are probably the easiest I've ever encountered but this is probably a good thing. My grandma would NOT be able to hit those Detroit Become Human QTEs. You can tell this was definitely made with people who do not usually play video games in mind, which is great because I think stuff like this is probably the only way the medium ever has a shot at being consumed in the same way movies and tv-shows are.
Art style is fantastic, insane how much work went into each frame. I watched some behind-the-scenes stuff about how they achieved the hyperrealistic-stylised look and they just film each scene and then paint over it??! This probably took forever and it sucks that I know people would be put off by the more experimental approach to visuals. When you're playing you can hardly even tell that the characters aren't moving that much. Narratively I'm a big fan of how this was written. No idea why the idea of focusing on a massive catastrophic event for half of your runtime and then exploring the aftermath for the other half hasn't been done before. It's cool to have a build up and climax in the first half of the narrative and then have another one much later on. Also helps to build on the significance of the event that happens in the first half? Seeing all of the repercussions makes it feel alot more grounded. The pacing is pretty well done most of the time too, there's a couple hiccups but nothing major. Having intertwining narratives was a good move for this format, works even better because the narratives completely branch off from eachother after the incident at the motel. The incident itself is crafted very well, you can feel for everyone in the situation. Nobody wants it to escalate, nobody wants this to be happening but it's too late now. A good move that helps humanise all of the characters involved, which is my favorite thing about this game. All of the characters feel so human. This isn't a hollywood movie. Sure, there's moments like the train escape that are kind of movie like but most things are pretty anti-climactic. At one point in my playthrough I was wondering where another character had disappeared to after a 12 year timeskip. Instead of them being dead or arrested, they had just moved to California. Everything felt pretty solid until the final scene. Why did they do that? Are they baiting for a sequel? I really do not care about the cliffhanger enough for it to be a satisfying ending so it just felt kind of anti-climactic (not in a good way this time).
In the past I've written about how much I dislike when these kinds of games inform you that a previous choice just had an impact (Oxenfree & the future of interactive storytelling). This game is extremely guilty of this, to the extent that they provide a map of all the possible things that COULD have happened at the end of each episode. I get that this is done to encourage replays, but I really think it subtracts from the overall experience. At one point I thought something unfortunate happened because I made a poor choice previously but nope! It happens no matter what! Thanks for telling me, I guess? Admittedly I could just skip over these screens but you're still informed in the top corner every time a choice has an impact in classic telltale style. Stop doing this!! The best part about Oxenfree is that they don't do this!!
8/10 release a cut of this where all the characters are still just jpegs of irl dudes before they got painted over
Sagebrush
(CW: contains mentions of sexual assault)
Admittedly played this because I assumed it would be pretty short and that December 31st deadline is getting pretty close.. enjoyed it about as much as I thought I would. It's a pretty typical walking sim that approaches the genre from a horror angle. I was pretty tense the entire time, but the open areas kind of eased my worries since I could see there was nobody around. This would be the perfect game to hide some G-man style missable creepy stuff hidden in. Maybe they did and I missed it. Gameplay wise it's pretty weak, they missed the mark on the progression. You just go to one location, find something like a key or a note telling you to go to another location, find something there and repeat. This game clearly takes alot of inspiration from Resident Evil's puzzle/inventory system so it's a shame they didnt get more creative with the environmental puzzles. They never go further than 'there is a mound of dirt here. You have a key, A VHS tape and a Shovel. Which one do you want to use?'. An item combining system probably would have been cool. They do this really neat thing they do with the doors where they slowly close behind you after you walk into a room and make a shutting sound after like 5 - 10 seconds? Just enough time for you to forget it happens and make you jump again. The movement also feels weird. Walking is too slow, running is too fast. I like the sense of dread you feel as you arrive at the compound because the sun is setting. There's that nagging thought that it's going to get dark in the back of your head. Once it does actually get dark it's not dark enough to be super creepy. Would have been cool if they just made it Silent Hill levels of dark, if everything more than 4-feet infront of you was completely black.
Sagebrush is focused on navigating an abandoned cult compound, a pretty unique concept. I like the environments you go through, consuming the story through notes feels fitting. Everything falls into place pretty chronologically though, it would have been nice to piece things together a little more. The cult is probably one of the more realistic depictions I've seen in video games, not that theres much to compare it to. They show how groups like this can grow through manipulation, there's a pretty cool scene where you see the cult leader practising his speech and perfecting the language he's using in order to be manipulative as possible. There's alot of references to sexual assault and rape in here and it all feels pretty unnecessary. Other than the fact than one of the women characters is spared by the cult leader it has no narrative impact. There's also a gross note about the cult leader wanting to have sex with an 11 year old that made me uncomfortable. It's only in the game for shock value. I wish there was more build up to the group suicide at the end, it just kind of happens. I think its mentioned like once on a calendar somewhere but you'd think it would be a big deal. Also thought they could have chose a less-generic suicide method than 'drinking poisoned lemonade'. You find out these cult members that have been self-harming excessively in order to cleanse themselves of sin, I think it would be more fitting for them to submit to a more violent end. It's not like this game doesn't already have shock-value stuff in it. Everything goes off the deep end after this anyway so it's not like they needed to maintain any subtlely. The end of this game is a P.T style confrontation with the ghosts of your past as you learn you're playing as a former member of the cult who was spared by the leader to live with him in his bunker. I can appreciate the metaphor of moving on from a traumatic experience but this felt pretty tacked on? It would have been nice to have this kind of thing run throughout.
The sound design contributes to the overall atmosphere pretty well, some of the creaking sounds had noise in the back so I could tell when they were about to play. The artstyle is pretty good, I think it would look better without the pixel filter though. If they're going for a PS1 aesthetic just keep the resolution/poly count low. PS1 games didn't have pixel filters.
4/10 only 3 more to go!! (i hate doing this)
Mothmen 1966
I've pretty much completely abanboned the original schedule of 12 games I put in place. I saw this one on twitter and thought it looked cool. Completed it in exactly 2 hours so I guess it counts? I can't wait until this is over so I can stop thinking about game lengths.
Mothmen 1966 refers to itself as a 'pixel pulp' game. A semi-fitting title, as it conforms to the aesthetic tropes of the 'pulp' genre, but not the narrative ones. Pulp fiction is, by definition, not very good. It's full of tropes and cheap writing, usually only serving one purpose. Mothmen 1966 has alot more to offer than some cheap scares.
The 'pixel' half of 'pixel pulp' definitely feels fitting. the pixelart is great, it emulates the style of the older-generation of games it clearly takes inspiration from effectively. The low-pixel count is definitely beneficial to the overall feel, applying a level of uncanniness to most close-up shots. It also helps mask the shape and features of the creatures, especially the titular Mothmen. The green color palette and deep shadows contribute to this overall feeling of uneasiness that's felt throughout the game. Something feels off, and everything being drenched in a sickly green doesn't exactly calm the nerves. The sound design pushes this feeling even further, with the ambience being unexpectedly pierced by the sharpest, most grating sound you can produce whenever something unfortunate happens. There's an unpleasantness to virtually all the sound effects. One character describes the sound of a flowing stream, but all we can hear is a shrill, reverberating synth sound. In order to emulate the 80s style of home computer games, limitations must be put in place on both the visual and sound quality. These limitations help the game significantly, allowing the player to imagine what they cannot see/hear while simultaneously contributing to the overall atmosphere of uneasiness.
Typical pulp fiction would have virutally no focus on the characters within the narrative, relying on archetypes so the majority of the narrative focus can be put on the spectacle present in the narrative. In this case, that spectacle would be the mothmen, but the writers didn't skip over the character development. The game alternates between three perspectives surprisingly frequently. We play as Harold, a gas station attendant with an infatuation for civil war weaponry, trying to fulfil his father's legacy. Victoria, a college girl who feels conflicted about her relationship, dreading the future. and Lee, a typical 'jock' who's trying to maintain the veil of masculinity he presents, when in reality he's emotionally weak and has anger issues. These characters don't really seem to like eachother at all, but are stuck together as they attempt to survive the onslaught of mothmen and other creatures that assault them throughout the game's 10 chapters. They have little development by the end of the game, but they seem to be more at peace with themselves than when they were introduced. I like the cosmic horror aspects of the narrative alot. I don't know what's going on, nobody in the game knows what's going on. We get brief glimpses at the reality behind what's unfolding, but the answers create more questions. It feels very Lovecraftian at times. Theres also a very funny bit where they find an old woman in the woods with a shotgun and one of the characters starts analysing it like a piece of media, discussing the subversion of gender stereotypes even though this is a real situation from their perspective (i do this every day).
Gameplay-wise this is a visual novel for the most part. Gameplay is mostly choose-your-own-adventure style situations where you need to avoid death, or minigames you control with 3 text box options. Again there has been limitations put in place in order to emulate the feel they were going for, but it hinders the enjoyability of the game surprisingly little. All of the minigame/puzzles are surprisingly fun (except the solitaire but thats intentional). They use the limited system in alot of creative ways, with no feelings of similarity between any of them.
6/10 monthmen.. moth.. men.. moth
Scorn
The negative reception of Scorn speaks volumes about the current climate of game critique. It has an average rating of 2.9 on Backloggd and 25% of the Steam reviews are negative. Some people have valid critiques and I can respect that, but the majority of critism directed at Scorn is in regard to 'the guns feeling bad' or 'the puzzles being too hard'. everything else about the game is disregarded; it's excellent artstyle, environmental storytelling and body horror. And on top of that, the puzzles are good! They require a little more time to complete, but not in a tedious way. There's just alot of moving parts to consider. But I guess none of that matters because the guns don't feel like the ones in Fortnite.
The world of Scorn has no regard for comfort. One of the first things the player does is insert their hand into a machine, which (seemingly painfully) attatches an ergonomically intrusive key mechanism onto them. The button is on the palm, making it easy to press but likely extremely unconfortable. Organisms are instruments here. They're are discarded, exploited, crushed and ripped open. One of the first puzzles has the player move a suffering, mouthless humanoid creature through an automated system as it reaches out to them in desperation. After activating multiple machines that rip into it, you ultimately deliver the creature to a machine that shreds them up and discards them into a hole. You then take their hand and use it as a tool to advance. Life has no value here, something which is clearly highlighted in the archetectural resemblances to human anatomy seen throughout the game. The human form is viewed from a perspective of efficiency instead of admiration, as the perfect tool. Everything around you feels alive. The walls, your weapons, the levers you pull to call an elevator. All living organisms being exploited in order to maximise efficiency. Sex is treated with nonchalance; statues and murals depicting sex and pregnancy are abundant in the final area. There's no intimacy to the act, it's performed without love. Viewed as a way to create more tools. They worship the act as it provides everthing around them. Without reproduction, there would be no walls, no weapons, no levers to call the elevator. Sex gives them with more living resources, so the residents build statues of it, their admirations rooted in exploitation. Towards the end of the game, the player hooks themselves into some kind of mechanism which latches onto their penis and begins stimulating it?? There's no pleasure or imtimacy to the act. Like everything else in Scorn, this act is performed with only efficiency in mind. You navigate soulless halls.
Usually when I play a game i'll take one or two screenshots, if any. I took 30 screenshots during my Scorn playthrough; it's packed with beautiful yet haunting brutalist structures. It's probably my favorite game ever aesthetically. It's narrative is told exclusively through environmental storytelling. Only a few things are clear to the player; they are navigating some kind of abandoned facility, and that facility has been infested by some kind of parasite. The aesthetics are so immaculate that you can easily identify and categorise your surroundings; you can tell what's part of the structure and what's part of the parasite. This speaks voumes about how effective the visuals are; they can environmentally demonstrate something through their aesthetics alone. There's also a clear class division demonstrated in the environments. At the end of the game, the player takes a tram from the infested, disgusting factory-like area to a more baroque, clean area. The environmental design takes inspiration from both H.R Geiger and Zdzisław Beksiński, resulting in an artistic symphony of form and color. Nikola Milicevic (Ebb Software's Lead 3D Artist) stated in [lock-on] 005 that the team took inspiration from Geiger "Regarding the shapes, forms, repitition and materials". These inspirations assist the overall atmosphere greatly, leaning into the familiar yet mysterious 'Alien' aesthetics.
Comfort in Scorn is disregarded in exchange for efficiency, a philosophy that echoes reality. In 2019 reports came out claiming Amazon workers were peeing in bottles because they were not permitted to go to the bathroom. If this dehumanisation of workers continues, where does it stop? Scorn provides a peek into a world that could potentially resemble ours in the future if this capitalism-driven exploitation continues.
The main critique of Scorn I see people bringing up non-stop is that the 'guns feel bad'. First off, the guns are only used in one brief chapter, and they aren't even THAT bad. sure, they don't feel good to use, but it adds some desperation to the combat. I was scared of every enemy, hiding around corners and running away frantically whenever they attacked. It was kind of fun to use the default gun and get into a rhythm of hitting twice, running and hiding, then hitting twice again. Even from a narrative perspective, the guns are alive. They probably don't want to be fired!! A living gun would definitely feel like shit. Also the reload animations are the coolest i've ever seen? I would reload my shit just to look at them again. People always say the puzzles suck too, but I found them extremely satisfying. Most of them follow the same structure of requring an extensive setup, which consists of mini-puzzles, in order to complete the main puzzle. They're kind of metroidvania-ey in style? Each puzzle will have you collecting components and backtracking through a large area in order to advance to the next step of the wider puzzle. They're FAR from bad, much higher quality than anything in other AAA titles like Plague Tale: Innocence. The puzzles in most games actually suck!! These ones don't!!
9/10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yRgs-Bd3b4
Slay the Princess
i'm finally free!! i never have to play another video game again. 'Slay the Princess' was the 100th game I completed this year and it feels pretty fitting. I thought this was a really interesting approach to the 'choose your own adventure' genre of visual novel. You play through an extremely brief scenario over and over again, where you go to a house on a hill, enter the basement and confront a Princess, you you're instructed to kill. Thing will change based on your actions in your previous run, but these 'playthroughs' never last too long. One run might effect another, then that one might lead to another, but you'll eventually get your 'memory wiped' and everything starts from the beginning. You have a narrator in your head, who you can choose to ignore or obey. Initially it just seems like The Stanley Parable, but it's alot deeper than that. You eventually find out that the situation you're navigating will ultimately end with your surroundings being consumed by something called 'The Long Quiet' which is like the void? There's nothing in there but you and some unknown entity, which wants you to bring it Princesses of different personalities and backgrounds so it can consume them, gain their perspectives, and eventually construct a form of it's own. It kind of reminds me of the ending monologue of Metal Gear Solid 2 (i love mgs2!!) in the sense that it questions how we're shaped by our surroundings; and that 'being' requires more than the biological aspects. I said it was pretty fitting that this was my 100th game this year and this was why. I'm just like the unknown entity fr. I consume mass amounts of media in order to gain perspective!!
Besides the narrator, there's also a cast of other voices, each representing an emotion the character is feeling - Disco Elysium style. I thought it was really cool that there's only two voice actors (one for the player, one for The Princess) but they offer such vocal range that they can virtually talk amongst themself. At one point theres about 15 different voices having a conversation inside the player's head. The voice actor for the player's inner monologue (Jonathan Sims) is able to offer such distinct performances for each of them that they remain identifiable. Both Jonathan Sims and Nichole Goodnight (The Princess) give great performances which improve the experience by a massive amount. It wouldn't be nearly as memorable without them. Probably also has one of the best soundtracks of the year, I left the tab open a couple times when I was in the 'Long Quiet' area and was just listening to the music. It nails the atmosphere. The hand-drawn art is unique and beautiful, I took alot of screenshots playing this too. Really cool how minor changes to The Princesses facial structure can imply which 'personality' you're talking to.
I didn't 'unlock' every princess but looking at the achievements I must have only scraped the surface of what this game has to offer. There must be an insane amount of paths to go down; at one point I was trying to repeat my previous actions, and chose to skip one step I performed previously where I said 'nuh uh' to The Princess. Skipping this caused me to end up going down a different path entirely. Definitely don't fully understand the deeper narrative here, but that's reasonable since I haven't seen all the game has to offer. I would definitely want to go back to this in the future, I could see myself getting all the achievements.
7/10 nuh uh
In 2024 I'm gonna be writing about every game I play and put them into some kind of catalogue on here, i'll probably put these in their own special christmas 2023 section (not that anyone reads these LOL the steam key I put in one of these is probably still unclaimed).
i am never playing another video game again. gootbye