No, no, I haven’t played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 yet, so stop asking me. Okay, so no one is asking me that, but I do intend on playing it soon. I ordered the Mirror Edition through a certain retailer-who-shall-not-be-named back in October and said retailer just keeps pushing back the delivery date. Because they suck. While I wait for it to arrive so that I can see what the hype is all about, I figured I would sit down and yap about what I’ve been playing. Winter blew in hard and fast this year, dumping over a foot of snow on the sleepy little Illinois town I live in. The old memories of winter game sessions past have come back to haunt me, making me want a Chrono Trigger remake more than ever, but I have plenty of games to keep me busy in the meantime. Maybe more games than I could ever play, if my newly populated Backloggd account is any indication, but I’ll talk more about that at the end of this post. For now, let’s get to the games. As often is the case, there may be spoilers in the text or screenshots below.
Ghost of Yōtei
Ghost of Yōtei was my most anticipated game of the year. Ghost of Tsushima was a really exciting surprise when it dropped in 2020. The original trailer for Tsushima looked really good, but I was skeptical about the combat. Was it a typical slash and roll game? If so, it might have been fine, but it might have also felt generic and bland. Thankfully, it ended up having some of the most satisfying combat I’ve encountered in a long time. I’m getting better at parrying in games, but I still tend to prefer dodging or blocking. I took to the parrying in Tsushima immediately, though, and loved the feeling of a perfect parry, especially when followed up with quick slashes that took down several enemies in the area. Like the Power Glove, it was So Bad™.
Yōtei refines and builds on what made Tsushima great, so of course I also love it a lot. The change in combat systems from stances to different weapons didn’t feel all that different to me. In both, I’m just pressing a button to change how I fight certain enemies, though I did like the variety in weaponry and the different combos that came with it. As with the stances in Tsushima, if you’d explained them to me before playing I might have said that it sounds too complicated for my taste, but in both cases the game introduces them at a pretty easy pace, and I picked them up quickly. Especially later in the game, when I felt very capable, it was a rush to start eliminating enemies with stealth in a camp, then making a dramatic leap down onto someone from a high platform, switching weapons to quickly take out a heavy, switching back to katana to face off against a dude trying to strike from behind, and on and on. Sure, I’d get myself in trouble every now and then, but when everything went right it felt so fluid and graceful and fun.
Much of what I loved in Tsushima is back, like the adorable foxes, platforming shrines, and the many beautifully designed katana and outfits. I will say I was a little mad about how long it takes to unlock the black dye merchant, though. I got The Armor of the Undying, my favorite set, early in the game, so I used it for most of my adventures. When I got it, I thought damn, this would so sick in black. And it did… many, many hours later when I finally unlocked the black dye right near the end of the game. Sigh. I also wished there were more bounty missions. It’s such a simple premise for a side quest, I know, but I really enjoyed tracking people down and (usually) slicing them up. The Mythic Tales were even more enjoyable, with lots of fun legends and really artistic sets to explore. I do miss Jin’s haiku, but Atsu’s sumi-e paintings were fun to do and captured a similar kind of reflective tranquility.
Speaking of Atsu, the most obvious difference between Tsushima and Yōtei is the story. I don’t know how much value there is in trying to decide which lead character was “better,” but I love them both. Jin’s quest to save his homeland, even at the expense of defying his father and the samurai tradition, was amazing, but I do love a good revenge story. Tracking down these infamous interlopers as Atsu, many of them oozing with nefarious intent, and killing them one by one as I remind them of their evil deeds, was awesome. Particularly in the state of the world at present, when it’s so easy to feel powerless to everything going on, having the ability to stand up against violent oppressors felt very cathartic. [SPOILERS ahead] I do think the narrative feints near the end, weakening its impact, when it clumsily tries to introduce a “maybe vengeance isn’t the answer” message in and after the assault on Matsumai Castle. Astu’s choice between staying to kill the Dragon and flee with Jubei and Oyuki felt forced and arbitrary, as did the finger-wagging about revenge not being the answer after. They didn’t need Atsu’s help to flee, and she (we) had done far more to topple Saito and his leaders than anyone up to that point. Yes, Atsu’s revenge was supposed to be about her family’s deaths and the argument is that she has a new family that she is failing to protect, but what about the locals who are also being slaughtered and who are also cheering on Atsu as she fights to liberate them? I wish more had been done to beef up that conflict, between family obligation and vengeful justice, because when it seemed like I was supposed to feel conflicted as a player, I was not. I wanted my revenge and to take down this bloodthirsty invader.
That relatively small quibble aside, I loved Ghost of Yōtei just about as much as I loved Ghost of Tsushima, and I’m sad that it’s not really getting its flowers this awards season. Nothing beats riding my horse (Mochizuki) through fields of drifting flower petals, racing toward a mysterious forest that holds the story of a fallen samurai or vengeful spirit. The glance of an enemy’s blade as I parry and run them through. The chitter of a gleeful fox as it leads me to an undiscovered shrine. And I can’t forget my faithful wolf companion, who I fought alongside to free her compatriots and my own. There were some emotional moments in the game, but the one that got me the most was when I parted ways with my canine companion at the very end. Tears, man. So many tears.
PowerWash Simulator 2
PowerWash Sim 2 is definitely a “more of the same” sequel, but I am 1000% okay with that. The first game was such a surprise obsession for me that shaking up the simple formula of “see dirt, spray dirt” sounded scary to me. Luckily, the changes the devs made are mostly superficial or incremental, not revolutionary. They added a home base to customize, a few parts for the power washer, cosmetics, and (most importantly) more cats. Hell yeah.
As with the first game, I found a special kind of joy in the tranquility of steadily, methodically washing various objects and environments. You start slow, unsurprisingly, with a van, then a public restroom, then a campsite. You gradually work your way up to larger areas, like the outside of a gas station, a roller disco, and an outdoor adventure park. Just like with the first game, sometimes I would load into a big level like the planetarium and feel a sense of “oh shit. This is going to take forever…” But it only made the process and outcome that much more rewarding. I like starting at the “seams,” as I think of them: borders, corners, edges. It gives me an outline and separates huge areas into smaller compartments, which I then begin washing one by one. Sometimes I might step back and observe my progress, but often I’m so caught up in the process that I’m 80% done before I even realize it.
One of my favorite podcasts, Pew Pew Bang, had their own bespoke gaming awards this (their first) year, and one of the categories was “Best Game We Stayed Up Too Late Playing.” PowerWash Sim 2 would have won this category for me hands down. I’m already a night owl, but I would very frequently find myself getting lost in the dirty, dirty sauce as I blasted away layers of grime, only to snap out of it and look at my phone: 4:30am. Cool. Cool cool cool. But I loved it. I could listen to podcasts, talk to my cat, or just spin a playlist for hours and ultimately feel accomplished when I set the controller down. Plus, the weirdly deep and quirky story is back, with little sprinkles of humor and lore to look forward to at regular intervals. Will I want revolutionary updates in future installments? Maybe. For now, though, I’m content to keep spraying the night away with whatever new vehicles, buildings, and locations they give us. Also, not for nothing, I had two dreams about power washing things while I was playing this game. It infected my dreams.
Donkey Kong Bananza
My history with Donkey Kong outside of his appearance in things like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart is mostly limited to the original arcade games and the Donkey Kong Country games. I did play the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but that didn’t exactly feel like a true DK game. I loved the Donkey Kong Country games, though, so I should probably get around to playing Donkey Kong 64 and the other recent-ish 3D titles. That table setting aside, I really enjoyed my time with Bananza, even if it began to feel a bit long near the end (my playtime was about “65 hours or more,” according to my Switch 2).
No Man’s Sky (2016)
It dragging on near the end could be my own fault, though. If you want it to be, Bananza is a big game. There are tons of bananas to chomp up, fossils to bash in, and outfits to unlock. I wasn’t taking a completionist route by any stretch, but I see banana, I get banana, even if I didn’t end up necessarily needing some of the abilities they unlocked. So I probably could have trimmed my playtime by 15 hours and made the final stretch, filled with a few final boss fake-outs, feel much less bloated. Big picture/length aside, I had a barrel blast (get it? get it?) playing this game. Smashing through walls, floors, enemies, and more never really got stale, and transforming into a hulking zebra or elephant to cause even more destruction or solve puzzles was a ton of fun.
The game felt great to play, I really liked the relationship between DK and Paulina, and [SPOILER] the reveal of the actual final boss to be King K. Rool was very cool. There were lots of easter eggs and nods to other DK games, like the retro DKC levels (hell yeah), musical motifs spliced with the new music, returning characters, and more. Also, I think I might have to start a series of posts called “I’m not a furry, but…” because there are enough animal-based characters that I find myself strangely attracted to that it should be noted for posterity. I don’t care, Poppy has got it going on. The attitude, the hair, the enemy-to-ally of it all? I’d let her donkey my kong, if you know what I’m saying. Nope, never mind, I don’t even know what that means. Anyway, Bananza was a great game and I can see why it received so many accolades this awards season.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
I have a very clear memory about Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2) that I’ve been meaning to write a Gaming Memories post about. I’ll do that soon, but suffice to say I had a great time with the original MGS3 and was very excited when I saw the first trailer for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. I’m on the side that is happy that it’s a 99% faithful recreation and not a reconstruction, like recent Resident Evil games. As much as I love those, I think a game like MGS3 has a certain charm in its silliness and occasional jank. I have seen some people complain about the ambiance lost with the removal of the kind of fuzzy haze that the original had (partially due to graphical limitations), but I like the clear, highly defined graphics and I’m not sure a modern game would look the same with that kind of nostalgic fuzz.
Either way, it was a lot of fun playing as Naked Snake once again. Some of it seems even sillier now than when I first played it, like Snake’s obsession with the most basic features of basic firearms and Ocelot’s infamous meow (which I had somehow scrubbed from my memory despite playing the original like seven times), and the thrill of the survival mechanics isn’t quite there after all these years, but it’s still a very fun, very unique game that I have tons of fond memories with. I still loved changing camo to blend in with different environments, the challenge of doing a non-lethal run, hoarding nudie mags like I do in real life and wait what, nevermind, I also loved seeing all of these familiar characters in super high fidelity.
One new memory I’ll share before I move on: The game opens with Snake starting the Virtuous Mission, HALO jumping into a Soviet forest in spectacular fashion. When the cutscene ended, I was in awe of my surroundings. The trees, foliage, etc. looked so good. Once I gathered myself and my gear, I moved to the next area: Dremuchij Swampland. I remembered this was the first area you enter because of the very goofy but also cute gavial crocodiles that skulk about. I can’t remember if you get the Crocodile Suit and Croc Cap from a pre-order or collector’s edition bonus, but I had it to start the game which was very cool because I don’t think I’d ever had it that early before. I could just cruise through this swampy area with that suit! I pulled the suit on, put on my cap, and started sneaking my way through the swamp by lowering myself into a crawl in the shallow water. Where I drowned. Immediately. In a croc suit and three inches of water. Sweet.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
I’ve played most of the mainline Zelda games, but there are some glaring omissions in my play history, none more notable than The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Growing up an avid reader of video game magazines (and later websites), I frequently saw Link to the Past near the top of not only greatest Zelda games lists, but greatest games of all time lists. I think I missed it originally because I didn’t fall in love with Zelda games until Ocarina of Time on the N64. I liked the original The Legend of Zelda for NES and have a lot of nostalgic love for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (the title screen and music still give me chills), but by the time I was bottling fairies and riding Epona in Ocarina of Time, Link to the Past felt dusty and outdated (this was the early days of 3D games, when this wasn’t an uncommon sentiment). I did try to play it via the Virtual Console on my WiiU at one point, but for some reason the opening, uh, five minutes(?) didn’t grab me so I moved on.
Determined to scratch this historically significant giant off my backlog before I dived into my copy of Expedition 33, I made it a point to actually get into it this time. And, surprise surprise, it wasn’t hard. I do own a copy of the SNES version, but I chose to take the easy route and play it on my Switch 2 via Nintendo Switch Online. Hey, I don’t feel at all guilty about using the handy rewind and save state features. When I finally crawled out of bed as Link and started to explore Hyrule, I was… slightly underwhelmed? Maybe that sounds like I’m being a contrarian hipster, but I guess after hearing about how incredible and perfect the game was, I was expecting something more? That’s on me, not the game, of course, but I had to mention it. I was also weirdly surprised by how much like the original The Legend of Zelda it was. Link moves from screen to screen, the same enemies populate a given area, you attack them from just the top, bottom, or sides, occasionally you push or pull something. It felt very basic, and when I looked at the map and how relatively small this version of Hyrule was (unfair to compare it to 3D versions, I know, I know), I was left feeling a bit like “oh… so this is it? Huh.”
Fear not, hardcore Zelda fans, and put down the tridents. I did eventually come to see why this game is so beloved. First of all, the “small” Kingdom of Hyrule was doubled in size when I discovered the Dark World version of the map. And, yes, the gameplay is relatively simple and straightforward, but the levels and combinations of enemies/environmental dangers became increasingly more complex and challenging. I breezed through the first few dungeons in the game, but the later ones were pretty daunting. I don’t know how I would have had the patience to overcome the final dungeon without the rewind feature. I also had frequent attacks of nostalgia, despite having never played the game. I loved the animated The Legend of Zelda show as a kid, and though it’s based on the NES game, so many of the enemies and items are in Link to the Past, too. By the end of the game, I got it. It may not be my favorite Zelda game, but I did love my time with it. Besides being a great game, it ignited the warm, fuzzy memories that I associate with tossing my bookbag aside and powering up my SNES to lose myself in adventure. And I’ve finally checked it off the ol’ backlog. Phew.
Hypnospace Outlaw
I’ve written about my love of desktop sims like EmilyisAway, Her Story, and Secret Little Haven, so it’s no surprise that a friend has been recommending Hypnospace Outlaw to me for years. I finally got around to it, and it really does seem like I have a weakness for games that recreate late 90s/early 2000s online environments (even with lots of creative liberties). The game takes place in 1999, which was just a couple years before I fully got online, but the fictional OS and web browser did make me think of Netscape Communicator and early Yahoo sites.
I had so much fun exploring the many unique yet familiar user pages. The conservative Christian page with a cult-like aura, the edgy, angsty teen, the chaotic group of nerds trying to maintain a shared space. The overuse of animated gifs and terrible background music was spot on, as was the tone with which some of the users wrote. It had a very “this is so new, hello world, wow, I’m really posting on The World Wide Web” vibe, which to my recollection is very accurate. It all tickled a unique brand of nostalgia for me that seems so hard to recreate in other mediums. The story was also very fun, and there were some genuinely very funny beats. My favorite was banning the use of a copyrighted image and deleting references to it on one of the more buttoned-up conservative user’s pages, and having her freak out and start rallying other like-minded people to her cause. Good times.
Gears of War: Reloaded
I played the first three Gears of War games on Xbox 360, and they were among the really great first-party series that made me heavily favor my 360 over PS3 that generation. Gears of War was violent, yes, but it was the intense cover-based shootouts and co-op experience that really drew me in. So, to honor my best memories with the game, I chose to play this remastered version co-op as well, with my friend Paul. I think we were both shocked that it took us only two play sessions to clear the story in six hours. I’m sure there was a lot more trial and error/dying in our original playthroughs those many years ago, but damn.
Like a lot of recent remasters, Gears of War: Reloaded looked and played just how we remembered (which is to say much better than it actually looked and played at release). Similar to my playthrough of the remaster of the first Mass Effect, however, one thing that stood out to me was the now-outdated level design. Massive doors, the inability to have too many enemies on screen at once, checkpointing that yoinks your co-op partner to your location, etc. Such were games at the time, though, and I still had a lot of fun replaying this game. Finding cogs, the sound of checkpoints and achievements (weirdly, it has both the Xbox achievement sound and the PlayStation trophy sound because I played it on PS5), the thrill of nailing a perfect reload, the powerful sniper rifle… all wonderful reminders of a simpler time in gaming.
Dispatch
I’m so glad I was able to fit this one in before the end of the year. Despite being a big superhero and comics fan, this game somehow slipped under my radar. I haven’t heard many people talking about it (among my friends and the podcasts I listen to, at least), but it sure seemed to garner some awards season attention. So when I was chatting with a colleague and he said it was one of his favorite surprises of the year, that sealed it. I bought it immediately and started it right after finishing Zelda. And I am in love.
It’s a short game, shorter than I’d like (only because I want more [insert meme of Kylo Ren screaming “MORE!” here]), but I was fully invested in the characters and story right from the jump. Heck yeah I was flirting with Blonde Blazer, but eventually I began to fall for Invisigal. Robert’s relationship with Chase? His rivalry with Flambae? Yes to all that and more. The writing and voice acting is top notch. It’s the kind of script where every other line may elicit a smirk or chuckle, but I genuinely found myself laughing out loud after several especially funny lines. And, yeah, tearing up a few times as well. Because it’s so heavily narrative and short, I’ll avoid any spoilers, but I will say that it ended up being one of my favorite games of the year, for sure.
Journey to Silius
As a former kid who used to browse the game aisle at Blockbuster with wide eyes and an empty wallet (and an amateur collector), I’ve seen a lot of NES cover art in my time. But when I spotted the cover for Journey to Silius at a small used game shop in Michigan, I was struck by how alien it looked. I don’t think I’d ever seen it before, but I was instantly drawn to the retro-futuristic planetscape, the eclipse, the stars, the 80s sci-fi font… I bought it without a thought and threw it on the backlog pile. I was browsing the NES games on Switch Online recently and I saw that Journey to Silius was actually in the collection! Stunned, I decided it was time to check out the game with the cool cover art.
I have to admit, it was so far from what I expected that it kind of threw me. Looking at the cover art, of this seemingly isolated world with broken down technowalls under an ominous but enchanting starfield and eclipse, when I clicked on the game icon I expected to be greeted by moody, mysterious music. Something like Metroid. Nope. The upbeat beeps and boops of 8bit sci-fi action titles hit me for a shock. The game, too, was far less atmospheric than I’d expected, playing more like Contra than Metroid. In just the first level, there are so many enemies and environmental dangers, all seemingly placed exactly where the player might jump, land, or stand, that even with Switch Online’s rewind feature I was struggling. Maybe once upon a time I might have had more patience for this kind of game. Or, hey, maybe some day in the future I will, too. For now, I’m glad I tried it and can strike it from my backlog, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for based on the enchanting cover art.
Backloggd
Speaking of backlogs, I wanted to briefly touch on one part of my motivation to revisit and start chipping away at my backlog: Backloggd, a site where you can build, organize, and track your game collection. It’s not a collector site, though, so don’t expect there to be much in the way of hardware, peripherals, condition, etc. I have a separate document that I use to track my collection, and I do note if I’ve played or beat games on there, but I really like having a place where I can add games, see cover art, write reviews, and more. If I’m being honest… it’s mostly about the cover art. I really love seeing grids of cool game covers, heh. It took me many hours to add my entire collection (like, so many hours it started feeling like work!), but it was actually a blast going through my games, revisiting titles that I haven’t played but have been meaning to for years. As I searched for each game, I found myself with conflicted emotions. On the one hand, it was fun seeing how many games I have yet to play, some of them I’m sure to love. On the other hand, I have… a lot of games I own but haven’t played, so I also felt an odd sense of guilt and dread. Like, will I ever finish them? Will that fateful day that I often dream about, where I’m totally free to just play through my entire catalog, ever actually come? Probably not anytime soon, and until then I was inspired enough to start chipping away at some of them, as noted above with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Journey to Silius. I really wanted to pop the Metroid Prime Trilogy into my Wii U and play Prime 2 and 3 before I dive into Metroid Prime 4 soon, but I just knew as soon as I did that Nintendo would announce the long/heavily rumored remasters. I did also play a couple hours of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, but I installed the new cart battery backwards and lost my save so I don’t wanna talk about it. Insert that angry emoji where it’s blowing air out of its nose here. But if all goes well, my future catch-up posts may just be littered with bits of old games I continue to scratch off my ever-growing list. For now, it’s on to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Finally.
I love summer. Always have, probably always will. The warm, breezy nights, taking my cat for long starlit walks, fun midnight console launches. Wait, what? *Pops hip back into place and downs a handful of daily vitamins* Back in MY day… Seriously, though, when I was growing up, autumn/”holiday” was the prime window for console launches. Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Saturn, PlayStation, Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, and more were all released between September and December. There were a few exceptions (PS2, N64), but in general I don’t associate spring/summer with major console drops.
Yet there I was, sitting against the wall outside of my local Best Buy at 9:30pm on June 4th 2025, 16th in line but guaranteed a Switch 2 Mario Kart bundle for the midnight release. I didn’t technically need to be there. I was able to successfully snag a preorder from a big box retailer weeks before, but they estimated my Switch 2 would be shipped a week after launch. Not cool, bro, as the poets often say. So when I heard my friend Kimberly was waiting in line at launch, I texted her to ask how bad it was. Not bad at all, she reported, so I grabbed my keys and headed out.
I love console launches, and I have fond memories of the midnight launches I attended in previous years (even if they were a bit torturous). This one was very chill. This store said they’d have around 75 consoles, so even when they split the line in two (one for people who’d pre-ordered for in-store pickup and one for the rest of us), I was sure to get one. Kimberly made fast friends with the people in line near her, but she joined me to chat for a bit before returning to her spot for go time. There were a lot of guys like me in the line. 30-40 something, graphic tees, imaginary scars of console wars past. But there were also some kids with their parents, and their excited chatter about the Switch, Mario, Zelda and more made the night feel a little more magical. When the time came, we were only allowed in the store two at a time (a much slower process than previous launches I’ve been to), and we were guided by a sales person who tried to convince us we needed… well, everything. Extra chargers, “required” expansion memory cards, cases, screen protectors, digital codes, physical games, protection plans, amiibo. Okay, so I bought a couple of those last ones ($30 for the new Zelda characters! $45 for the new Street Fighter ones! An absolute wild increase from $15). After nabbing my Mario Kart bundle, a Pro controller, and amiibo, I headed home to set it up.
Later, when people asked me what I thought of the Switch 2, I made the very dumb joke that they should have called it the Switch Too, because when I first booted it up, excited to dive into a new generation of Nintendo weirdness, I was greeted by… the standard Switch home screen and interface. The console looks the same, the store is the same… I have to admit the sameness of it all drained a lot of the thrill. Aside from the few GameCube games they added to Nintendo Switch Online, there wasn’t anything new to check out. It was… a Switch, too. I’m glad it’s finally here, very happy that I have one, and I’m thrilled to have a new Nintendo machine that can handle beefier games – but ultimately the Switch 2 launch was just a bit of a letdown for me.
Mario Kart World
What saved me from tossing my shiny new console in place of the old Switch and forgetting about it for a month? Mario Kart, babyyyyy. I didn’t own the original Super Mario Kart for SNES, but it was a regular rental for us. It was the rare game that I loved so much I would play it during the precious few minutes between breakfast and leaving for school, then hop right back in when I got home. I’ve played hundreds of hours of the console versions and they’re the only games I will confidently talk trash about since I know I can usually back it up. I haven’t made an updated gaming tattoos post, but I have a Blue Shell tattoo on my elbow. My love for the Kart runs deep.
And there is a lot to love in Mario Kart World. Namely, Peach, Touring Peach, Pro Racer Peach, Farmer Peach, Sightseeing Peach, Aviator Peach, Yukata Peach, Aero Peach, Vacation Peach, Baby Peach, Touring Baby Peach, Pro Racer Baby Peach, Sailor Baby Peach, and Explorer Baby Peach. Did I mention I also have a Peach tattoo? Insert smirky smiley face here. I do love all of the different costumes, especially for my homegirl Peach, but I was a bit sad that Nintendo abandoned the IP expansion from Mario Kart 8. I’ve seen people trying to defend the decision, saying it keeps Mario Kart “pure” by sticking to Mario characters, but if you’re telling me you’d rather have a fucking Cataquack than Zelda himself (an old internet joke that I should leave without clarification, but I just know that to this day people will be like “uhhh aCtuAlLy tHaT’s LiNk, ZeLdA iS tHe gIrL”), I don’t know that I can trust you. When Sega showed the Sonic Racing: Crossworlds trailer at the recent Summer Game Fest, I was thinking “wow, what a weird time to show this when Mario Kart World literally just dropped.” Then they showed Hatsune Miku. And Ichiban from the Yakuza games. Then Joker from Persona 5. And I wept for what Nintendo lost. Yes, expand the roster with a bunch of goofy Mario characters and enemies (I wanna see Wart drifting alongside me before I blast him with a perfectly aimed green shell), but can’t we also dip into other fun IP too? It doesn’t have to be Super Smash Bros. Kart, but why not Zelda, Chibi-Robo, Ness, K.K. Powerslider (see what I did there)? Come onnnnnn, Nintendo.
That tangent aside, I do love Mario Kart World. It retains much of the same tight control that my favorite entry, Mario Kart 8 (and Deluxe) has, Knockout Tour is a blast (especially with friends), and the tracks are expansive and filled with fun details. I’ve gotten three stars on all the Grand Prix tracks and have just a few costumes left to unlock, but I’ve had a great time with it so far. I do hope they update the game or offer DLC to offer more tracks (I’d love some throwback or retro-inspired tracks and characters) and maybe fix the Mario Kart Wii-level BS rubberbanding, but overall I’m happy to have a new Mario Kart game to hop into whenever the itch hits.
Secret of Evermore
Back in December 2019 (The Before Times, as we’ve taken to calling the pre-pandemic years), I posted about the oldest game on my backlog: Secret of Evermore. At the conclusion of that post, I said with a resolved twinkle in my eye: “writing this entry has made me determined to play Secret of Evermore at long last. It’s about time, I think.” What a fool I was. Well, to give myself a little credit, I tried. The SNES copy I owned had a dead battery, and Nintendo nor Square have made the game accessible to play legally, so against my usual judgement I downloaded a ROM, connected a controller to my PC and tried to give it a shot. It kept crashing in the same spot less than an hour in. I could not get it to work on two different computers. Ugh. So much for scratching the oldest game on my backlog off the list.
Fast forward to March of this year and I’d finally, after many years, decided to buy a soldering iron and teach myself that same useful skill. I watched YouTube videos, took a training course through my job, and practiced on some of my less-prized SNES carts before moving to Secret of Evermore. The “surgery,” as I like calling, it was a success, so I finally had a working Secret of Evermore cart to play! I busted out my old SNES and finally got to work.
It didn’t zoom straight to my favorite RPGs of all time list, but it was a solid action RPG with some cool enemy design, silly story beats, and charming art. The combat definitely felt dated, but I had several moments while exploring of that kind of nostalgic feeling you only get while actually playing an old school game on its original hardware. I wasn’t magically transported back to my childhood, but it felt about as close as I could get. In the end, I had a good time, I learned how to solder, and I finally, finally beat the oldest game on my backlog. Hell yeah.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
I haven’t played anything else on my Switch 2 and would have liked to jump from Mario Kart World to Donkey Kong Bananza, but I’m pretty deep into Death Stranding 2 and want to finish this before moving on. The Death Stranding games represent Kojima at his most… Kojima, to me. The narrative is loosely held together by a series of convenient plot devices, MacGuffins, and contrivances, the symbols and metaphors are far from subtle, and some of the gameplay mechanics and tutorials are overexplained or poorly integrated into game progress. And somehow I still love it.
So far, it really does feel like a carbon copy of the first game (it even has the lazy video game opening of “whoops, remember that big, satisfying conclusion from the last game? Throw it all out, we have to do it all over again”), with a new country to connect, mostly the same vehicles, tools, and weapons, the same antagonist (booooo), etc., but I’m actually okay with that. My favorite memories from the first game are captured in moments. Gameplay moments in hauling piles of packages from place to place, or intense moments with the colorful cast of characters. And that’s really what Kojima is good at. He comes up with powerful, memorable moments that exist outside of the sloppy narrative they originate from. And he gives us interesting worlds with lots of potential for fun, unique emergent gameplay events. I’m avoiding specific spoilers because the game is still so new, and maybe I’ll check back in later with more thoughts after I finish it, but so far it’s been a fun time tramping around Mexico and Australia.
[EDIT] Siiiiike, I took so long to finish writing this post that I’m currently watching the credits scroll. I could rewrite the last few lines to segue into something more natural, but I want to capture the reality of writing this specific post, too, which has been an exercise in finding time here and there to chip away at it, unlike my usual sit-down-and-do-it-all approach. Anyway, I spent over 250 hours playing Death Stranding 2. I almost have the platinum, I’ve five-starred all facilities and preppers, and overall, as with the first game, I enjoyed my time running and driving packages around, building roads, and climbing snowy mountains. My opinion of the storytelling remains unchanged, too, however. This game is dumb as hell and I don’t know that I will defend it in many conversations. Some of the silliness is fun, sure, but some of it is so damned hard to put up with, let alone like. The guitar duel, with added musical puns? I think the discord for me comes in the clash of Japanese storytelling, which is less concerned with logic and laying out a digestible story for its audience than it is with emotionally resonant moments and themes, and Kojima’s obsession with western media and film. At one end, the story feels automatically grounded because we see characters that are not only hyper realistically rendered, but familiar because they’re famous actors and celebrities. When you take that and mix it with the kind of over-the-top silliness of an anime, and you have giant babies, guitar jesters, and convoluted plot points that are a mix of fantasy and science fiction, it just doesn’t work for me. Great game, very fun, one of the most gorgeous games I’ve ever played… and also dumb as hell. I think that about sums up my feelings on both games, heh.
Venus Vacation PRISM – Dead or Alive Xtreme
I’ve never been shy about my love of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 and its iterative versions. I even platinumed two of them! It wasn’t just the busty, barely clothed virtual ladies I liked, either. The first two DOA volleyball games had those, too, but I bounced (lol) off those pretty quick. I liked the resort vibes, collecting all of the outfit pieces and gifts, and the dating-lite aspect of trying to woo the various badass volleyballers. At some point after the last release, Team Ninja said they wouldn’t pursue any more Xtreme games (in part, I think, because they refused to release them in the West), so I was shocked, shocked I say, when the trailer for Venus Vacation PRISM dropped and revealed that the next entry in the series was, essentially, a dating sim.
Sadly, the only shock I’m feeling now is over how disappointed I am in this game. It fails for me on multiple fronts. First, as a dating sim you don’t even really date the characters. There’s a lot of flirtation but it doesn’t have the full, satisfying romance arcs of most other dating sims I’ve played. It also has far, far fewer characters than the previous games. I do like the characters they’ve included, but no Helena? No Marie Rose?? No Momiji!? The gameplay is also a letdown. I legitimately enjoyed the volleyball games in the previous entries (even the ones I bounced off of), but I was willing to put that aside for fun romance-sim action. The romance part is a dud, but the photography gameplay is also pretty lame. It amounts to taking the same shots over and over, wasting time moving the camera around a bunch to try and get a three star rating and… that’s it. The system doesn’t even seem logical, as sometimes the same exact shot is worth very different points. Tolerable for one playthrough, but when I started a second playthrough to romance a different character I quickly lost interest. I have to take the same pictures of the same girls all over again? Ugh. It’s a beautiful game and there are some fun character moments, but unless they patch it or expand the roster, I don’t know that I’ll come anywhere close to the platinum for this one. Bummer.
Midnight Murder Club
In the clurb, we all dead. Sorry, that trend is like a year old so I just look like an idiot. Anyway, I work at PlayStation and I was still surprised when the beta for this game dropped. I didn’t remember hearing anything about it, but it looked pretty fun so I recruited some friends to play and we jumped in. It’s such an easy pitch: It’s basically hide and seek in a huge, pitch-black mansion. With guns. It didn’t have the same legs as Phasmophobia for my friend group, but we played a ton and had a lot of fun. I even got the platinum trophy for it. Playing with bots is a huge boost for us. The bots are sometimes very dumb and sometimes too accurate, but it’s always nice to have that option. I hope they add more levels in the future, though. The mansion is very big and fun to navigate, but I would love to shuffle between a handful of different locations, like farms, amusement parks, office buildings, etc. A bit of environmental destruction would be very fun, too. A shot ringing out in the dark with a bright flash is already scary enough, but I think the wood of a wall or door exploding in splinters next to your head would add some thrill to an already nerve-wracking moment.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
I own an Xbox Series X, but my primary console is PS5, which is why I was a little sad when Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was announced as an Xbox exclusive. I would buy it, I thought, but I really wanted to earn sweet, sweet trophies for it. Well, apparently Mick Jagger was wrong once again* when he sang “You can’t. always get. what you waaaant,” because I got exactly what I wanted when a PS5 version was announced for this year. Suck it, Jagger.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is one of the best video game adaptations of all time. If not THE greatest. I could talk about the incredible graphics and sound, the amazing music, the great level design and story, the acting, etc. But the game’s greatness transcends that, or perhaps is transcended due to all of that and a little magic to become an incredibly rare example of a video game that doesn’t just adapt existing material or fail on some level in an attempt to capture the spirit of its source material – it actually fully feels like an authentic, exciting addition to the series. I rewatched all the Indiana Jones movies before playing this game, including the newest one for the first time, and for my part The Great Circle feels like yet another thrilling Indy adventure. It captures the spirit of the character and his many wild exploits. [Major SPOILERS ahead] The recreation of the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark lulls us into feeling like this might just be an impressive recreation of the Indy formula, but the rest of the game goes on to give us new Indy action, romance, exploration, and drama. And the fact that it ends with Indy exploring another famous Ark, this time Noah’s, was a nice way to wrap it back around.
Being able to wander the halls of Marshall College, chatting with Marcus Brody, getting into a fist fight with a giant Tony Todd (who was great in this role). Having free reign to explore the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, and the many tombs and catacombs beneath Cairo. Beating the absolute shit out of an entire camp of Nazis and then piling their bodies in front of their flag to snap a commemorative photo. These are all memories that felt natural and magical at the same time, like I’d stepped into a secret Indy film that had been buried in Steven Spielberg’s basement. One of my favorite things to do in Egypt was to wear the Nazi uniform, approach an officer, and just as they say “Wait a minute…” I punch them in the face and run away. The best.
Punching fascists in Italy was also a blast. There was one soldier that always respawned near a ledge up on a building, and I took great pleasure in finding different ways to send him flying to his death every time I made my way near him. I punched him off, shot him off, whipped him off, and bashed him with a shovel off. Truly, with my country sliding ever-increasingly toward fascism, this game served as an incredibly cathartic experience. Bootlicker ass-kicking aside, there was so much more that I loved about this game. The care put into creating living spaces and communal areas had me paying close attention to every new environment I found myself in. I really liked the houses in the Sukhothai village, and the winding tunnels and tombs beneath Rome were so cool to explore. Speaking of being very cool, I loved Gina. I was convinced she was going to stab me in the back, like stupid sexy Elsa from Last Crusade. But, no. She was a brave, skilled, strong, and beautiful companion until the end. I also thought Voss was a great villain, and his relationship and scenes with Colonel Gantz were hilarious. This game had it all: Action, humor, intrigue, exploration, gorgeous locales, a sexy sidekick. I swear every time I played a new Tomb Raider or Uncharted game, I’d say I wish they’d make an Indiana Jones game like them, and finally they have. I really, really hope they make another.
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars
The Suikoden games have never quite breached the mainstream like other big RPG series, so although I had high, high hopes Konami would release remasters (HD-2D or not), I wasn’t holding my breath. Imagine my surprise when they announced not only a remaster of one Suikoden, but both of the original games and they would be bundled together. Smack my ass and call me [Hero], I couldn’t believe my luck. [Some SPOILERS ahead.]
I discovered Suikoden II first, not long after my mom had moved us to the suburbs from the city. I made friends at my new school pretty quickly, but it was a while before I was integrated into their lives like typical high school friend groups. I had a lot of downtime, so I signed up for a membership at a small movie/game rental shop that was walking distance from my house. It made me feel like an adult and I tried my best to be responsible and return things on time. I’d run out of N64 and PlayStation games to play and was looking for something new but also still chasing the highs of the RPGs I loved on the SNES, like Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, Final Fantasy III, and Illusion of Gaia. The beautiful cover art of Suikoden II is what caught my eye, but I had never heard much about the first or second game, and the 2D screenshots on the back did look a bit dated, but I didn’t have all that many other options. I gave it a shot.
Gorgeous sprite work, an enormous cast of diverse characters, a castle I could expand and make my own, a riveting and sprawling story about war and vengeance, a series of tense but fun strategy combat sequences? I was in love. I started out not caring about recruiting all 108 characters, but of course once I started running into some of them, in their sometimes weird and unique conundrums, I had to have them. I ran out and bought the official strategy guide and finished with something like 85 Stars of Destiny. I replayed it later, after buying and playing the first Suikoden, and got all 108. I loved so much about it. Starting out with a best friend and excellent combat partner, being torn apart and ending up opposing each other, returning to my castle to find my new friends filling every new nook and cranny there…
And it was a blast revisiting it in beautiful HD. Most of what I’d loved remained intact, of course, and I found myself getting teary-eyed at the same dramatic moments and laughing at the same jokes. One thing that surprised me with this playthrough was how much I loved Nanami as a character. I remember thinking she was funny in my previous passes, but there was something about her strength, compassion, and unshakable loyalty that really endeared me to her this time around. She had some of the funniest lines and her big sacrifice scene (and the ensuing twist) wrecked me. What a great character in an awesome cast. Eilie’s crush on my character was charming as ever, Nina and Flick’s romantic scenes were hilarious, all the returning characters like Neclord, Kasumi, Viki, Viktor, and more were a welcome sight. I really wanted to platinum it this time, but doing so required some real dedication to mastering the very challenging minigames, and I just didn’t have the patience for that. Yet. Maybe I’ll do another replay some day and really commit. Regardless, I loved my time with this incredible game once again.
I also played the first game, of course, and before Suikoden II (I wrote it reversed to segue from my discovery of Suikoden II back in the day). I’d only played Suikoden once before, and I remember clearly preferring the sequel. I still do, but man did I love the first game so much more this time around. I don’t remember my original experience to say how much of my new appreciation is due to graphics or performance improvements with the remaster (though the backgrounds looked much, much clearer), but I found myself far more charmed and engrossed this time around. The character portraits look so good, too. Maybe better than those from the sequel?
If you can rename your main character in a game, I almost always name them Joey, so it was very fun to see that after naming both MCs after myself, there were jokes/references to the redundancy in Suikoden II. One thing I’d forgotten was how good the story in the first game is. I was very much into the rebellious (literally) son versus the blindly loyal father, and some of the political beats about people turning a blind eye to tyranny, being so willing to follow an obviously evil, corrupt leader, etc. felt weirdly resonant given the current state of the world. As with the sequel, I loved building up an army of interesting characters, forcing a romance subplot in my imagination (though I was torn between Camille, Kasumi, and Viki), and grinding levels while catching up on podcasts. I truly love these games and look forward to playing them yet again some time down the line.
Inscryption
Inscryption, like Doki Doki Literature Club, is the kind of game that creates a ton of buzz due to its narrative twists and subversive storytelling. That’s all people would really say about it is “it’s kind of a deck builder,” but when I would say that’s not my thing, they would insist that there’s more to it. And, to their credit, there is more to it than that. I’m not usually too shy about posting spoilers here, because I’m just sharing my personal thoughts for posterity (and fun), but I won’t spoil too much here either way. The deck building thing is still not my thing, and I think it prevented me from appreciating this game the way some others do, but I did very, very much enjoy the weird and wild story, the beautiful art and design elements, and just the general vibe and tone. I will spoil one specific thing, which is the mechanic where when you die and have your (character’s) photo taken, which is then used as a new card with perks you can choose from other cards in your old deck. At first this seemed like just a fun little quirk, but eventually I was able to make some super powerful, useful cards which carried me in some pivotal battles. There were seemingly small things like this that subverted expectations and made some of the more challenging stretches easier and more fun. The fact that death is built into the gameplay made me feel less stressed and precious in the earlier battles.
TimeSplitters 2
TimeSplitters 2 is not on my Top 25 favorite games list, but it’s very close. It was in my top 10 for a stretch in the years just after it came out. This was one of the few games I would play with music blasting in my headphones, just existing on some other level and feeling my feelings. Trent Reznor might be screaming in my ear about existential dread (or straight up fucking, am I right? High five, high five) and I’m just sitting cross-legged in my basement, blasting these goofy bots for hours. Fast forward to the remaster, and I played through about half the story and did some bot battling, in part to try and tap into that fuzzy nostalgic glow that comes with revisiting an old favorite, but unfortunately it’s one of those all-too-familiar examples of the memory being better than the game. For its time, TimeSplitters 2 was an incredible, fun, versatile shooter. But it definitely feels rough playing now, particularly the checkpointing and some of the humor. Fans have been shouting it for years, but we need a solid remake of this game, for sure.
Zenless Zone Zero
I was the copywriter for the PlayStation Stars program (RIP), so I got to see (and write for!) some of the really fun third-party partnerships we had. The studio supplied their own copy for our Zenless Zone Zero digital collectibles, but I reviewed it, wrote the campaign description, and got to see the collectibles ahead of time. I was only vaguely familiar with the game before researching it for this task, but I didn’t need to learn anything to know I wanted the Nicole Demara collectible on my virtual shelf. What a cutie. I only played for a handful of hours, because gacha games just aren’t my cup of tea, but I was very impressed by the presentation. The graphics are busy but bold and charming, the animations are stellar, and I generally had a good time in combat. Nicole turned out to be a fun character aside from her design, too, so it was a win all around. I had to cut myself off before I got too tempted to start unlocking (or buying) any of the very cool characters/skins I saw in the store.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Phew, I had to save this baby for last. A new game from the team behind my beloved Persona series? While I am eagerly waiting for any news on the next mainline game in that series, I was also very interested to see what they did in a new, original, fantasy setting. As you might guess, in part due to the many awards this game won, I loved it. I will say I disagree with some of the podcasters/content creators I follow who declared this game a “better” game than Persona 5, but I can understand that perspective given some of the extra polish and care (particularly when it comes to combat) that this game has over P5. Regardless, I love them both.
I’m always a little nervous starting big RPGs, even if I’m confident I’m going to like them. I’d heard that there were a lot of similarities to Persona (social links, Archetypes [Personas], calendar/day night cycle, etc.), but I get sucked deep into these huge narrative games so diving in always comes with some nervous energy, especially learning all the systems (and they introduce a LOT to you in the opening hours of this game). But the moment I felt my worries melt away was when I first stepped onto the main stretch of road in Grand Trad, the royal capital. The Grand Trad music swept along with epic flourishes, people chattered in the streets, and I was tasked with finding a recruitment center so that I could sign up to fight in the royal army. A warm nostalgia washed over me. All at once I felt all the times I had a similar rush in games like Dragon Quest VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Suikoden II, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Persona 5, even EarthBound. It’s the moment you forget all of the systems and rules and mechanics and just embrace the tantalizing journey that lies ahead. A whole new world of side quests, plot twists, death, and revival await.
I decided to save the platinum trophy for a second playthrough sometime down the line, but I only missed two trophies, one of them requiring a good chunk of a second run. I loved my time with the colorful cast of characters, the incredible soundtrack, and the unique, beautiful world. I really like having a home base in RPGs, and your gauntlet runner serves that purpose nicely here. There is something so satisfying about having a space to chat with party members, read a book, cook, and even drop a deuce between missions. And the travel music (“Journey’s Legs”) is amazing and still randomly gets stuck in my head. The story was a very fun twist on a classic succession trope, and the combat was fast, dynamic, and deep.
I do have to admit I was sad that one thing they neglected to bring over from the Persona games is a romance system. Yes, I understand that it would have seemed a bit out of place in this scenario, but I always want to date my party members. I suppose it was a blessing in disguise, though, because I was having a hard time deciding whether I’d like to woo Juani or Hulkenberg. Hulkenberg is graceful and strong, loyal and determined, and very funny (even if usually by accident). She also loves food and has the best little grumpy face ever. But Juani is so full of life, kindness, wit, and style that it’s hard to deny her appeal. She’s a talented, widely loved singer and powerful fighter in her own right. And then there’s the wildcard, Fabienne, who is very much my type but probably off-limits in any case. Or the badass, pink-haired Catherina? Oh, I dunno. Sigh.
Anywho, my unrequited attraction to fictional characters aside, I did love my time with Metaphor. I will say the last boss was a huge pain in the ass on normal difficulty. It took me a handful of tries with wildly different strategies before I got lucky and took him down. I’d grinded to level 96 beforehand, had the best weapons, maxed out all of my Archetypes, and more. I really thought I was ready. It’s hard to keep up when he gets twelve turns in a row, though, causing me to scramble to heal and cure status effects or cast buffs/debuffs, never mind doing any significant damage. He reminded me of some of the recent optional bosses in the Persona games, who were also deadly. Still, I look forward to going back for another playthrough (and that shiny platinum) at some point in the future. And I’ll have my fingers crossed for a dating sim spinoff. Please, Atlus. Please.
I’ve also been having retro game nights with friends, where we pick one console and play a little bit of a bunch of different games from that era. We don’t play any of them too extensively and we’re using the actual consoles (with a RetroTINK 5X-Pro for scaling) so I can’t get screenshots, but there have been some fun standouts. We jump between well-remembered games, like the Donkey Kong Country games for SNES and Ridge Racer for PlayStation, and less-than-fondly remembered titles like Quest 64 on N64 and Shaq-Fu on SNES. Shaq-Fu was fun to play and joke about, even if it kinda… sucks. I did buy an adapter to play some of the import games I’ve bought, and the first one I tried was Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon, a sidescrolling brawler which was very cute and fun. There are currently a ton of new games I aim to play, like Donkey Kong Bananza, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and (soon) Ghost of Yōtei, but I look forward to regularly dipping into my collection for some of these retro gems. And maybe I’ll find the time to keep up with this blog more often. Maybe. Shhh.
*Jagger was also wrong when he sang “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” because apparently that’s all it took was boundary and trust issues
What a fucking year. For games, yes, but also for this dumpster fire of… a world? Just my country? I dunno. I have moments of hopelessness, but overall I’m trying to focus on myself and dive even deeper into my hobbies. As mentioned in my last post, I really wanted/intended to write about the games I played as I played them this year, but that didn’t happen. I played a lot more games than I realized, so I wanted to at least do a sloppy catch-up post to get some of my thoughts down, even if I can’t dive as deep as I’d like into some of them. These are kinda in the order I played them in, -ish, and of course there are some [SPOILERS], even in screenshots. I mostly won’t be discussing games I’m still playing or replaying (Stardew Valley, Lake, EarthBound, etc.), with a couple exceptions (Phasmophobia and Sea of Thieves for PS5). Feel free to just search for games you’re interested in, or strap the fuck in and get ready to read the shit out of this behemoth of a post. I went a little overboard there, sorry. Let’s just get started.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
And what a game to start with. I’m embarrassed that I’m so far behind with blogging that I’m starting with a game I played a full year and a half ago, but here we are. This is one of those games I wish I had more time to dive deep into. I would spend approximately a dozen or so paragraphs on Purah alone, because I love her and want to smooch her sassy face, but we’ll get back to her soon enough.
There was some discussion about how Tears of the Kingdom was “more of the same,” when it came out, but I have to believe that was the typically loud and wrong gamer segment of social media. I’m actually down for some “more of the same” sequels from games, within a limit. The constant need for innovation and genre-defying revolutionary changes sometimes spoils a perfectly good thing. Again, there is a limit. I’m not saying all sequels should be slightly more polished versions of their predecessors, but there is nothing wrong with refinement and iteration. Having said all that, I don’t think that’s what’s happening in Tears of the Kingdom. At first glance, sure, the core experience seems the same. Same graphics and art style, music, characters, even the same primary map/world.
But as Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto has said, at the center of the Zelda experience is exploration. For most of the mainline games, the Zelda team have sought to stoke a sense of childhood wonder and curiosity in the player. A fear of dark caves and strange creatures, the thrill of discovering something completely new and unexpected. Trying to climb something you clearly shouldn’t be and eating shit. Breath of the Wild did this better than any other Zelda game I’ve played, and Tears of the Kingdom expands on it beautifully. What’s better than having an expansive world with tons of hidden places to explore? Well, how about a bunch of magical floating islands that are a blast to both traverse and also dive off of? How about a massive darker-than-dark underworld that is legitimately scary to explore and has cool skeleton horses you can ride around on? And THEN, the real kicker, what if you could engage that childlike part of your imagination and make all kinds of machines and vehicles using whatever you found around the world? Five-year-old me, who once made a “tank” out of an overturned wheelbarrow, two old tires, and a segment of aluminum rain gutter, is tickled. If Nintendo’s goal was to create a childhood fantasy simulator, mission accomplished.
I’ve written about my love of Breath of the Wild before, and much of what I loved in that game has returned here. The combat is simple but satisfying, the world is filled with interesting encounters and charming characters, and I still have a crush on Princess Zelda, who despite largely being MIA in this story is somehow even more of a badass. The fight with Ganondorf, where you beat his first phase and then his life bar just extends beyond the screen, was amazing. Like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom’s story is fairly simple but told in fragments in whatever order you unlock them in. And I like the story well enough, but it’s the moments that make up the story that matter more to me. Spoilers, of course, but the whole broken Master Sword storyline, and having to recover it after all this time? You already got me hooked – but it’s how you recover it and the storyline behind it that made it so memorable for me. There are a few ways to get the sword, and though I wish I’d taken the route with the Dragon of Light because of story reasons, my path to the sword was still thrilling. Avoiding too many main quests, I found myself in a spooky, bespoiled Korok Forest, with the goal of cleansing the poor, sickly Great Deku Tree. I should note that I wasn’t particularly well-equipped to battle the shadow creatures at this point, and even the damned groping shadow hands were scary to me. So as I scraped along, progressing in my goal of helping the Deku Tree and sure I’d be rewarded with something incredible for doing so, I dropped down beneath the tree and found myself face-to-ugly-face with Phantom Ganon. “I’m dead,” I thought. But there was no way to escape, so I pulled out my best sword and shield, gave a hearty “HYAAAT” and leapt straight toward my inevitable death. Except I didn’t die. Because I am the best and most skilled gamer that has ever existed. Okay, that’s definitely not true, but it sure felt like it after many broken weapons, panicked dodge rolls, and half-skilled strikes, when I beat Phantom Ganon and made those bold and untrue claims to my cat.
Claiming the sword a second time, kind of, after progressing the story and finding out that Princess Zelda willingly transformed into a dragon to restore the sword for a future Link to recover was even more epic, and I legit got misty-eyed more than a few times later in the game with story beats like that. It’s what I mean when I say the moments are what made it for me. The story in the game is good. But I’ll forget most of it at some point. I won’t forget diving off the back of my immortal love, who sacrificed herself to become a dragon, unsheathing the Master Sword, and landing on a similarly transformed dragon Ganondorf (Demon Dragon) to slash away at the corrupted pods on his back.
I will also never forget about Purah. In this game, Purah is a baddie. Not as in a video game enemy or villain. As in a Grade A, 10/10, blue ribbon baddie. A smokeshow. Or, as the internet has come to call her: Science Mommy. From the flirty, sassy attitude, to the bookish but stylish look, Purah can master my sword any day. Is that too crude? I don’t even care. I would risk it all for Purah. Zelda who? What, she disappeared and no one can pin down her location? Oh noooo, guess I’ll just hang out with my new bestie and bae, Purah. I kid, I kid, Zelda for life and all that. But, man. Purah can get it. And by “it” I mean my penis. Okay, okay, I’m done. Sorry. I’ll pine over her more in a future Video Game Crushes post, I’m sure.
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly
I spend a lot of my time doing stressful things in video games. The battle with Phantom Ganon mentioned above, for example. Phasmophobia, a game that made me stink-sweat when I first played it, is currently still in the rotation. But sometimes I just want to chill out and enjoy a nice cup of virtual coffee. Well, enjoy serving it to an eclectic group of colorful characters in a sleepy cafe in rainy Seattle, anyway. I really liked the original Coffee Talk, so I was excited that a sequel was released in such (relatively) short order. Hibiscus & Butterfly offered more of the same low-stakes, high-charm vibes that the first game did, which is a true balm in these trying times. It once again very much had me constantly craving coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, too. It’s always an odd point in a game’s favor when it gets me jonesing for something in real life. I was once again slightly disappointed that I didn’t have as much of a part to play in the character’s stories, especially with regards to romance (let me smooch these cuties, damn it), but I can’t say I was surprised, given that the first game was the same. Regardless, it was another very welcome, very adorable cozy game.
Final Fantasy XVI
Final Fantasy XVI is not, however, a very cozy game. It’s dark, occasionally very sad, and features bombastic battles between massive beings. So, yeah, not cozy, but still fun. I had a great time with FF XVI, but my opinions about it as a game/RPG and my opinions about it as a Final Fantasy game are very different. As an action RPG, I loved it. Incredible graphics, sound, and music, huge dramatic set pieces, stunning boss battles, and some touching character moments. But it truly does not feel like a Final Fantasy game to me. This is just my opinion, based on my own experience with the series, and I’m not saying that this disqualifies it as a good game, so put down the Tonberry knives.
While I played the original Final Fantasy for the NES when I was a kid, I didn’t really get into the games until Final Fantasy III (VI) on the SNES. I loved that game, and with each subsequent release in the series, I couldn’t help but compare them to it. Final Fantasy VII-IX didn’t ruffle my feathers too much, but when I saw the early screenshots and promos for Final Fantasy X, I was like “this does not look like Final Fantasy…” It was so colorful, the characters looked so… un-fantasy-like? There was a soccer-like game in it? It didn’t feel right to me. And then I played it. And loved it. And it did end up feeling like a real Final Fantasy game. I had similar thoughts about XII, which seemed like a wannabe-MMO, and XIII, which looked more like a stylish action game than a classic JRPG. And let’s not forget Final Fantasy XV. You’re a group of dudes going on a road trip? What? How is that remotely Final Fantasy? But, I have to admit, in every one of those examples, I ate my words. Sure, they strayed from the roots of the series in some elements, but after playing each of them for some time, some mystical combination of ingredients must have clicked for me, because I ended up feeling like they were all in their own unique way, very Final Fantasy.
I never reached that point in Final Fantasy XVI. It had its moments, sure, but for the first time it felt as if the creators were looking to other pieces of media or art for inspiration rather than at their own legacy. I was satisfied, in the end, but as I beat it I couldn’t help but sadly think “maybe next time,” meaning maybe Final Fantasy XVII will be a return to the magic formula that makes Final Fantasy games feel like a unique blend of fantasy and tech, of romance and tragedy. That caveat aside, as I said, I did have a great time with it. It is a gorgeous game, with spectacular lighting and particle effects filling the screen during the epic boss fights. I often complain about the lack of summons in recent Final Fantasy games, spoiled by some of the older games that offered up to two dozen or more summons, so the fact that summons are the stars of the show in this game is huge. There, again, aren’t all that many, but they really take center stage and are given dazzling light shows and battle scenes with their special attacks. The Final Fantasy VII remakes have been scratching the nostalgia itch for Final Fantasy games of yore, and I did have a great time playing it, but I hope the next mainline installment is a bit more familiar, personally.
Goodbye Volcano High
Goodbye Volcano High was a charming surprise for me. I was fully hyped for the PlayStation 5, so when they showed this game as part of the PlayStation Future of Gaming event just before launch, I was intrigued. The art style seemed a little middle-school sketchbook to me (not in terms of skill, but the character designs/style, I guess), but the premise of a group of high schooler dinosaurs having to face the end of the world instantly hooked me. The game came out two years late, apparently due to narrative polishing and to avoid crunch, but it sure seems like those were two years well spent. I went into this game feeling intrigued. I came out of it feeling in love. With the characters, the story, the art, the music. I love to be surprised by games like this.
First, let me say I really dug (get it? Because they’re dinosaurs? I know, I know… clever girl, right? Because Jurassic Park? Which is also about dinosaurs? Okay, stop flirting with me and let’s get back to the game) the whole high school band plot. As someone who was bad at an instrument in high school and still somehow sure he’d be famous for playing it, I related to much of the strife and conflict at play, and felt a surge of pride and excitement when these characters overcame them to find their own version of success (not to mention when I nailed the hardest rhythm section to score a trophy). The backdrop of the impending world-ending meteor provided such an interesting point of conflict in many of the relationships. These characters were already dealing with the kind of social and interpersonal struggles of high school life we’re all familiar with, and now the meteor is ratcheting some of those issues way up. These characters know there is a strict time limit on figuring out their shit, and it makes some scenes that much more emotional.
More specifically, I really liked the relationship between Fang and Naomi. I didn’t know if there were romance/dating options in the game, but as soon as I saw Naomi I thought she’s cuuuuuute. And when Fang started receiving mysterious, anonymous texts from what seemed like someone crushing on them, I hoped so hard that it was Naomi. The whole thing with the Sailor Moon (Pretty Heroes) cosplay, and her showing up to the show wearing it to surprise Fang? My heart melted as if it had been hit by a meteor approximately 10-15 km wide. I also loved the D&D scenes, particularly the final, climactic one. It was very funny and charming, but also felt so powerful in terms of where these characters were at in the story and how near the end truly was. I haven’t platinumed this one yet, but I plan to. I’ll gladly play through it again to revisit my prehistoric friends.
Heart of the Woods
I bought Heart of the Woods solely for the pretty cover art. I was browsing Limited Run Games’ site, just looking at some of their recent releases, and the cover art for this game instantly caught my eye. Gorgeous cover art? Visual novel? Only $35 for a physical copy? Bam, straight to the cart. Visual novels are interesting to me because I feel like they’ve grown in popularity in recent years because they’re much easier to develop than other types of games (mostly static art assets, limited or no mechanics or systems to build, no 3D worlds or spaces to design, etc.). For a host of young writers who might otherwise be self-publishing or sharing their work in online spaces, they offer a novel way to reach audiences (and merge their love of writing and games, I imagine). This does mean that you get a range of experiences with the writing in visual novels, and Heart of the Woods is a prime example. There is a lot of good writing here, some interesting character work, and plenty of charm. But it’s also a bit wordy and bloated and might have benefitted from some trimming down. I’m glad these kinds of games exist, though, because even when the presentation isn’t particularly award-winning, I can usually feel the developer’s passion for the material, as I can here. I don’t regret taking a chance on the game with the pretty cover art.
Persona 3 Reload
Phew. This is one of the games I wish I had time to devote a whole post to. Or a book. Or an anthology. I’ve made no attemptto hidemy love of the Persona games, and like many fans I was calling for a remake of Persona 3 for years. I played Persona 5, then Persona 4 Golden, then Persona 3 Portable. What struck me about playing them in that order was that I could see the evolution of P-Studio’s style and design. I was shocked that Persona 4 Golden felt so very much like Persona 5. I’m used to RPG series that try to revolutionize or innovate with each new title, so it was weirdly refreshing to see that P-Studio is more about iteration and refinement. The core Persona magic is there in Persona 4 Golden, with slightly less flash and style, and the same can be said of Persona 3. It’s not as flashy and polished as Persona 4 and 5, but the formula is there. So, as I did with the other two games, I loved my time with Persona 3 Portable.
So when they announced that the new Persona 3 was going to not just be a remaster (which also came out, hah) but a full remake in the style and engine of Persona 5? [Huge SPOILER for the sake of a dumb joke] Like the protagonist, I just straight up died. And it turned out to be just what I’d hoped for. Intact was the dark, twisted story, the incredible character moments, my girl Mitsuru. But now the game has the same vibrant style and sheen of Persona 5, with a ton of minor (and not-so-minor) quality of life upgrades, like new activities to do with social links, Shifting (Baton Pass), All-Out Attacks, smoother traversal, and more. I was a little wary of having new voice actors, but I did understand the reasoning (wanting to give younger talent a shot, especially because I imagine there will be spin-offs and other content coming later). I was especially worried about Aigis, because I thought Karen Strassman did such an amazing job in the role (as she has in everything I’ve heard her in). But the new cast really made the characters their own, and I was excited to hear many of the original voice cast (like Strassman, Michelle Ruff, Yuri Lowenthal, and more) in supporting roles throughout the game.
So, yeah, I loved this game. Again. Cried my eyes out at the ending. Again. Romanced Mitsuru. Again. I got the platinum and will almost certainly play again someday. I haven’t yet played the expansion, Episode Aigis, but I might do that very soon. I’m also about to start Metaphor: ReFantazio, which I hear is another P-Studio banger, and I have my fingers crossed so hard they’re fusing into one big, freaky finger that we’ll see a teaser for Persona 6 sometime in 2025. Yes, I know it’s probably still a few years away, but just gimme a lil taste. Just a little crumb of art or a cheeky “Ready for more?” voice line over a black screen with a title and vague release window. I will take it. I love Persona so much.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Speaking of things I love, the Spider-Man games and Tom Holland Spider-Man movies have seismically shifted the needle for me with the quip-slinging web shooter. I read some Spidey comics as a kid, I really liked Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage for the SNES, and the Tobey Maguire trilogy was my proverbial jam. But the recentgames and movies, including the Spider-Verse movies, have just been so damned good, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is no exception. It has the same blockbuster setpieces and AAA shine as the previous games, but it really delivers on the relationships between characters and the depiction of Venom in a way that pleasantly surprised me.
I got misty-eyed multiple times, and I really liked the quieter character moments, like riding bikes with Harry, doing street art as Hailey, the stuff with Miles and his Uncle, the homecoming side-quest, and more. The Pete and Miles combo worked so much better than I thought it might, with their distinctive combat styles feeling much more intuitive to switch between than I thought they would be. Plus Tony Todd as Venom? A slew of new Spidey suits to unlock and switch between? The Mysterio levels? Wraith? I feel like I’m forgetting more than I’m remembering about this game, which might seem like a dig. What I mean is that it’s filled with tons of fun content, missions, nods, and activities despite not having an aggressively bloated length. And, in the end, swinging around the city as (a) Spider-Man is just really fucking fun.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me
I played this game as one of my Halloween/spooky season vibe-setters. I’d played all of theDark Pictures Anthologygames, plus Until Dawn and The Quarry, so it really was about time I got to this entry. Somehow I missed the press for this one, though, maybe because I knew I’d play it regardless. So I thought the story for this one was going to be about possession, like an Exorcist type of thing. Nope, hah. It was like Saw mixed with American Horror Story: Hotel. It might have the least likeable cast of the games I’ve played, but I did end up digging the game overall (enough to play through a few times to get the platinum trophy). It retains some of the jank from previous games, but there is something about the combination of realistic graphics and choice-based horror that really clicks with me. It’s probably middle of the pack in terms of my ranking of these games (plus Until Dawn and The Quarry), but I’m on board with them pumping more of these out.
Dredge
I downloaded Dredge to get a PlayStation Stars collectible, but I’d heard good things about it and it was spooky season so I decided to play it a bit beyond the intro to see if it might get its hooks in me. 35 hours and a platinum trophy later… yeah. I’d say it was pretty amazing. It has that cozy combination of simple mechanics and satisfying rewards, so once I started upgrading my ship and traveling beyond the relatively safe starting area, I was in deep. Unlocking new ship parts to access rarer fish, saving a dog (and a stranded researcher), slowly unraveling the mystery of my lack of memory, all while zipping here and there in my own little fishing boat? So good. There is a part of me that wanted a bit more hands-on sim-y type of mechanics, like in Far: Changing Tides, but the simple, easy path was also fulfilling in its own way. I loved this one.
Blair Witch
Blair Witch is such an interesting game. It lacks some of the gloss and polish of AAA games, and at times looks and plays like a game from a generation or two ago, but it certainly has grand ambitions, many of which it delivers on. It’s somehow not at all what I would have expected from a game based on the Blair Witch movie/lore, and also perfectly situated in the mythology. Sometimes I play a game and think “I don’t envy the person reviewing this…” and this was a prime example. Playing it doesn’t necessarily feel good. It doesn’t exactly look good. And it stumbles occasionally in delivering its story. But… it’s still good? Like, definitely worth playing? Particularly for fans of the greater Blair Witch universe, I would guess, but I also think fans of psychological horror will find it pretty interesting, if they can get past the lack of glamor and shine. I found it compelling enough to replay a few time-consuming sections to get the platinum trophy, for what it’s worth.
The Evil Within
The Evil Within is another very interesting horror game, but for very different reasons. A new horror game from Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami? Published by Bethesda? I’d heard mixed opinions when the game came out, but one refrain stuck: If you like Resident Evil, you should play this game. Hey, that’s me! I love Resident Evil! And somehow it took me until 2024 to play this game. But, I can say with no hesitation: They were right. Look, I won’t sit here and tell you this is a perfect game. The stealth sections are straight up trash. Some of the writing and acting is very hammy (though that does add some charm, like a good B horror movie). But it is very Resident Evil. Like, parallel universe Resident Evil 4 (or 4.5?) similar. It very liberally borrows from RE 4, with enemy-rush levels, crossbow snipers in and out of cover, traps, the mansion, chainsaw guys, spiky-masked guys, hidden statues, and much more. But RE4 was directed by Mikami as well, so… I dunno, I just would just have loved to have been a fly on the wall of the Capcom offices when this game came out, hah.
The stealth segments aside, I did enjoy my time with The Evil Within. It was, as promised, a hammy throwback to old-school survival horror. The shooting felt pretty decent, the increasingly horrific and twisted world was fun (well, horror game “fun”) to explore, and I may have developed a slight crush on the monotone asylum nurse. Because of course I did.
Until Dawn (Remastered)
Getting the platinum trophy for a game doesn’t always mean I loved it, but it does often mean I liked a game enough to want to extend my time with it. I realized this because I did, in fact, love the original Until Dawn so much that I got my first platinum trophy for it. I’ve gushed about my love for that version already, so I’ll just say that I think this remaster does a nice job of harnessing the power of the PS5 to make a great looking game even better. Some of the facial expressions look a little weird on occasion, as they do in the original, but man do the environments look stunning. The particle and lighting effects add an additional layer of atmosphere to an already moody and spooky setting. I couldn’t quite tell if the voice parts had been re-recorded until a couple of specific lines sounded very familiar later on, which could be a good or a bad thing. I liked the original performances a lot, so as long as the performers were compensated for their contribution again, I’m cool with the reuse. I intended to get the platinum trophy for this version as well, but I encountered a bug late in the game that temporarily soft-locked it for me, so with a crowded Halloween playlist I had to move on until it was patched. I finished the game just recently, and I’ll go back and get the platinum next Halloween, probably.
Silent Hill: The Short Message
Like many, I was a big fan of P.T., the “playable teaser” for the now-dead Hideo Kojima Silent Hills game. It seemed the franchise might be dead after Kojima’s falling out with Konami and their subsequent bailing on development of many of their premier franchises. With the announcement of a Silent Hill 2 remake and this short experience, however, hope for new, exciting Silent Hill projects was reignited. I won’t say that the ember of hope was snuffed immediately with this demo-length short game, but it was… contained. There is some very cool spooky visual stuff here, and a couple of P.T.-esque scenarios. I did really like the very subtle camera height change (it’s first-person) in a flashback scene, where you’re seeing through the eyes of a younger Anita, for example. A lot of the flashback stuff was disturbing and effective, I thought (the closet… phew), despite some stilted voice acting and writing. The storytelling in this was pretty solid, though they handled the themes of suicide and social media pretty clumsily and were a little too eager for the player to “get it.” Show, not tell, please. I also could have done without the extended chase scene at the end, which was very annoying, but I did like Sakura Head and the cool effects used to bring it to life. This game was free, so I can’t complain too much, but I hope they spend a little more time shaping the narrative elements in the next full Silent Hill game.
Silent Hill 2 (Remake)
My history with the Silent Hill franchise is… spotty. I have to admit, I really didn’t care for the first Silent Hill when it came out on PlayStation. I’d read that it was poised to give my beloved Resident Evil a run for its money, especially with a very scary fog effect, so I ran out and rented it from the small shop around the corner from where I lived at the time. I miss that rental place. They had a bin of big movie posters, the kind they get for promotional use, for only $1. It’s also where I discovered Suikoden II, Tales of Destiny, Silent Hill, and other cool OG PlayStation games. I tried really hard to be responsible and not rack up late fees, but I had like $30 of late fees when I stopped going, ashamed that I couldn’t pay it back right away. Then they closed down and a dry cleaning place opened there. In a place called… Silent Hill.
Just kidding. It was a place called Streamwood. So, no hill. Just a stream and some woods? Anyway, I was pretty disappointed by Silent Hill. I don’t feel this way anymore, but at the time I clearly remember thinking the fog was an overhyped way to cover pop-up and load times. After all, many of my early N64 and PlayStation games had that fog, but because of memory limitations, not “atmosphere.” Add to that a clunky combat system and slow pace, and I kinda thought it was a dud. I should go back and try it again, because I’m sure I was being unfair to it. When Silent Hill 2 came out, I finally had a job and a shiny new PS2 I was desperate to buy games for, so I decided to give the sequel a shot. And I was so glad I did. It was a very tense, stressful experience, in a way that was different from what I was used to with the Resident Evil games, but I walked away from the ending buzzing. My first encounter with Pyramid Head was so memorable. I’d seen him in flashes earlier in the game, and had been trying my hardest to save ammo. When I entered a room with him for the first time, I panicked and began unloading, thinking I was supposed to beat him. No. I wasted all my bullets, got a quick and fatal poke in the ribs, and had to reflect on my life. He was terrifying. I also loved the multiple endings, even if I didn’t have the patience to get all of them. My favorite was one that I’d read about but didn’t get. The rumor was that if you look at a knife (given to you by Angela) in your inventory enough, the game reads it as you being suicidal so you then unlock an ending where you kill yourself. That was such a cool, interesting, dark mechanic that I got Angela’s knife tattooed on my arm as part of my video game sleeve.
I was, admittedly, a little worried about this remake, though. I was thrilled it was happening at all, of course, but when Bloober Team was announced as the development studio, I can’t deny I was doubtful. They made Blair Witch (above) and Layers of Fear, and I found both of them to be lacking polish in several ways, despite both having cool, spooky concepts. My fears were unfounded, though. Silent Hill 2 (Remake) might not be the most dazzling game ever, and there are a few odd visual artifacts (the newspaper boxes, for example, are hugely disproportionate), but generally it looks pretty stellar. The fog and atmosphere in particular are very well done. They kept all of the features I loved, like the crackling radio that alerts to enemies, and smoothed out the combat and traversal a ton. Besides Pyramid Head (who is as legendary as ever), the story is the star of the show, and it’s told with reverence and some nice improvements. The Angela dad boss fight? Fuuuuuck. The slow trickle of clues revealing the truth behind James’ and Mary’s experience? Daaaaaamn. So good. So, yeah. Like the original, I loved the new and improved Silent Hill 2.
God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla
This entry is very special to me. God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla is my very first game credit. I’d worked on other games to lesser extents, but this was the first game I did the copywriting for on my own. I got briefed on it months before release, got to write the marketing and social beats for it, and even had my name in the credits. There was no physical copy so I didn’t get to write the box copy (that would come later, with Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered!), but seeing my name in the credits, especially after going through and beating it, was a huge high.
That aside, the game itself was, as expected, incredible. When I was briefed about it, someone from the dev team said it had elements of Hades and other rogue-lites, which made me wonder how much I’d like it. I have to be very into a game to deal with bashing my head over the same levels again and again, but as it turns out, I am indeed very into God of War. The combat in the new games is so good and masterfully designed that I never feel like a death is unfair. If I die, I usually know exactly why and can make a plan to fix the problem when I try again. This lends itself well to a rogue-lite formula, because my frustration is almost always with me, not the game. So, as with the base game, I loved the combat in Valhalla, and I thought they did some really fun, interesting things with Kratos reflecting on his past and his identity. So proud to have my name attached to this game, even if I wasn’t involved in the actual design/development.
Helldivers II
As a perk of my job, I get game codes for all of our first-party games. Some I don’t necessarily need, because I buy physical copies regardless, as was the case with God of War Ragnarök, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Until Dawn, and others. But Helldivers 2 was one of those games that wasn’t on my radar, so when I got the code I thought hmm, I guess I’ll check it out later, if I have time. But then I was seeing TikToks of it all over my FYP, my friends were getting hooked, the reviews were great… I had to (hell) dive in and check it out.
And I had an absolute blast with it. Shit can go south so quickly in it, but the stakes never really felt that high. My friend group didn’t take it too seriously and were just there to blow shit up and have a good time, and it helped with some of the more chaotic moments. Whether we were being swallowed by a wave of Terminids or found ourselves fatally surrounded by relentless Automatons, we would say “That’s Helldiving, babyyyyy” and prep for the next round of chaos. Things were especially hectic early on, when a couple of us were less than experienced and being carried by a high-level friend, but eventually we got great at communicating and coordinating. It was such a unique thrill to plan a route on the map, drop in, have to change plans because everything is going sideways, lose some ground, gain it back with a fiery fury and many bombastic Stratagems, and make a narrow escape on the shuttle as enemies descended around us. What a ride.
Sea of Thieves
I played Sea of Thieves on my Xbox One when it came out, but I returned to it when it released on PS5 this year for a few reasons. First, holy shit an Xbox game on PlayStation!? I suppose it’s not as crazy as it sounds, as Microsoft has published games on other platforms, like the Nintendo DS, before. And PlayStation has released MLB the Show on Xbox and Switch for a few years now, but something felt different about this one. So it was an odd thrill to boot this up, similar in some small way to when I hit play on Sonic Adventure for the GameCube after Sega quit the hardware game.
Second? Trophies, babyyyyyy. And third, I often find myself missing the beautiful water effects and (sometimes) tranquil seafaring in Sea of Thieves. I previously stopped playing because I’m not a fan of being trolled and harassed while I’m trying to do my own thing. Rare said at launch that they had plans of bringing private servers to the game, then they stopped mentioning it, then they gave them to just influencers, then, finally, after years, they did end up introducing them. People can say what they will about it “being a pirate game so how can people be mad when people act like pirates lololol,” but pirates respected each other and had a shared enemy of states and wealthy merchant companies. They didn’t just attack every ship they saw for the lulz. Regardless, with private servers and shiny trophies to earn, I hopped back in and had some pretty good times with friends. We were all still outraged at the ridiculous monetization, but what are ya gonna do at this point?
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Yet another game that deserves its own post. Sigh. A few rambly paragraphs will have to do. I’ve already discussed at some length my origin with the original Final Fantasy VII in my post about Final Fantasy VII Remake, so I’ll just get right to business. And by “business,” I mean my sadness at Jessie Raspberry not being alive in this one. They showed Biggs at the end of Remake, and with the party realizing that Whispers are actively trying to stop them from changing fate, meaning that fate (and the events of the original FF VII) can be changed, I was so hopefully that my flirty little eco-terrorist girly would be back in action in Rebirth. Sadly, aside from some wistful flashbacks, she was not. 0/10, terrible game, do not play.
Okay, okay, I’m being dramatic. I loved this game. Well, before I open the flood gates of adoration, let me say that I do agree that the mini-games were a bit of a drag on the game overall. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a good mini-game, and there were some excellent ones in Remake. But this is a very big game, and when you actively require some of these mini-games to progress the story, especially later in the game, it really starts to feel like a drag on the pacing. As with many sprawling RPGs, I tend to wander a lot and do side content as I slowly advance the story, but once I exhaust side quests and other stuff I want to then focus on the main story. It’s a little frustrating when I’ve reached that point, committed to finishing, and suddenly the game is like “wait, have you played THIS mini-game? Well, you have to. And you have to win at it to progress. You’re welcome.” Thanks.
That gripe aside, where do I even begin with the good stuff? Some of it carries over from the first game. It’s a beautiful game, as expected, with huge, gorgeous landscapes and setpieces. The music was once again amazing, especially considering how much of it there is. I was many hours in and I caught myself thinking is this… the fifth version of the Chocobo theme I’ve heard? Sixth? Seventh? And that’s just for one single theme! And much of it tugged on the same nostalgic heartstrings that the music in Remake did. Speaking of heartstrings, how about that ending? Like an absolute Buster Sword through the heart. I knew it was coming but, as with Jessie, I hoped things might be different this time. Fuck. Tears flowed freely that night.
But, as with my thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom, my memories of Final Fantasy Rebirth come down to the moments. Riding electric scooters with my friends at the beach (as dumb as that sounds… and looks, kinda). Playing all the mini-games and taking in the amusement park vibes of the Gold Saucer (the Haunted Hotel was my fave). Fixing Chocobo Stops and petting each baby Chocobo as I did. Flying Blue Chocobos! Playing piano for Joe Biden. Cait Sith’s climactic fake-out (again, tears flowed). Elena’s cutie patootie self. The tension of the parade marching sequence (rocked it). Acting in the musical with your team. Visiting your hometown and reminiscing with Aerith and Tifa. The flashback to a young Cloud deploying with the legendary Sephiroth. The summons, particularly the whole side quest sequence with Gilgamesh. The cruise with the Queen’s Blood tournament. Red XIII walking around as a soldier. Red XIII climbing a ladder. Red XIII riding a Chocobo. Red XIII’s voice change!? You know how when something funny happens in a video game, you kind of blow air out of your nose as a “laugh”? Like a slightly audible version of “heh.” Red XIII’s voice change made me legitimately and helplessly guffaw. I did not see it coming. And I loved it.
I should devote these last paragraphs to the Skywheel date and romance in general. In the original game, I wasn’t quite as invested as a lot of other games. I chose Aerith for my Gold Saucer date back then because it felt like I was supposed to, but I wasn’t head over heels for her. In Remake, I was admittedly torn between Aerith and Tifa, but ultimately Jessie stole my heart so I didn’t have to worry about picking sides. I knew I’d have the chance to go on a date with one of them on the Skywheel at the Gold Saucer in Rebirth as well, so for most of the game up to that point I was thinking about them. With far more fleshed out backstories and developed personalities, I had more than enough data to push me in one direction or another. Aerith is a sweet, caring, kind, and uniquely powerful woman. Tifa is tough, tenacious, fiercely loyal, and supremely talented. Aerith seems to have a crush on me (Cloud), and Tifa still seems to be holding a candle for me from our shared childhood. I went back and forth all game, and in the end I was happy to discover you don’t really have to choose. The game chooses for you based on how you interact with each character, how many of their missions you’ve done, your bond, etc. So I knew when the night came and I swung open my hotel door, the right woman would be waiting. And that woman was…
…Yuffie!? Wtf! And apparently I was more into her than I knew because I got the “intimate” date! To say I was shocked would not be adequate. I specifically spent a ton of time with Aerith and Tifa. It’s not like I neglected Yuffie, I tried to keep up with all of my team members, but how she ended up my number one girl, and to that level… I have no clue. Having said that, our date was adorable and I did actually think wait a minute… am I missing out? I really loved how they expanded her character and brought her to life in this game. Sure, she can be a bit… much at times. But she’s fun, energetic, super skilled, and very cute. I think I’m leaning Aerith overall this round, but the fact that Yuffie is a contender was a real surprise. And neither of them hold a candle to Jessie, but that ship has sailed, sadly. Anywho, in the end, I loved my time with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, tears and all. Bring on the final chapter.
Princess Peach: Showtime!
As a big Princess Peach stan (she features prominently in my video game tattoo sleeve, even), I was cautiously optimistic about Princess Peach: Showtime! when it was announced. I liked Peach’s first solo game, Super Princess Peach, more than most, it seems, but I didn’t like how all of Peach’s powers were emotions, as if she wasn’t yoinking vegetables out of the ground with the best of them in Super Mario Bros. 2. It sure seems like Nintendo was conscious of not making the same mistake twice… mostly. Yes, Peach throws aside those “girly” emotions and plays a range of types in this game, including traditionally “fem” roles like patissiere, ice skater, and mermaid, but also some more typically “masc” roles, like ninja, superhero, and Kung-fu master. But she only steps into these roles by *checks notes* playing dress-up?
Okay, so maybe Nintendo still isn’t letting Peach be the badass girly that she is, but I still had a fun time with Showtime!. It was on the easy side, which was kind of a bummer. I don’t think easy games are inherently bad, but I like how Nintendo handles difficulty in mainline Mario games, where much of the required gameplay is fairly easy or medium, but there are some optional levels that are brutal. As with Super Princess Peach, this choice felt a little like it might be suggesting that girls, the primary audience for this game, aren’t as skilled at games as boys. To be fair to them, their argument might be that they don’t think that girls are bad at games, only that they aren’t as interested in difficult challenges as typical male gamers, but… I dunno. Feels a little fishy. Regardless, Peach was cute as hell throughout this game. I was snapping screenshots every time she appeared in a new costume, hitting those poses and being all girlypop. And the game felt really good to play. I loved zipping around as Ninja Peach, skating elegantly as Figure Skater Peach, and riding a trusty steed as Cowgirl Peach. The climax of the game, with a massively powerful Mighty Peach bashing the ever-loving shit out of everything in her way, was particularly fun and rewarding. Plus, as always, Peach is cute as hell.
Astro Bot
I’m not sure a single game has made me feel as much joy as Astro Bot. I’ve loved my time with so many games, and even some of my favorites like Persona 5 have had lots of joyful moments. But Astro Bot is just saturated with adorable charm. I kept finding myself smiling or thinking “this is so good” constantly. The game controls well, as it did with Astro’s Playroom, which is critical in a platformer. Beyond that, this game expands on and adds to everything that made Playroom great. There are lots of great power-ups/abilities (the sponge and mouse levels are so great), the DualSense integration is still best in class, and there was always some small, fun new thing for me to do. Seriously, just running around through piles of broken pixels or leaves or junk was never not fun.
I wasn’t the lead copywriter on this game, but I was briefed in on it very early. The brand manager for Team Asobi mentioned that there would be special powers and courses for PlayStation first party characters, like Kratos and Aloy. I asked if there would be a return of third party characters from PlayStation’s lineage, from games like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid, like there was in Playroom. I essentially got a “wait and see” answer, so I was a little nervous that we wouldn’t see them again. Nope. First and third party cameos for dayyyys in this game. There are little nods, like pushing the Katamari ball or Jill Valentine hiding from zombie dogs, but then there are whole levels or sections dedicated to games like Ape Escape and Loco Roco! Even Persona 4 Golden got a couple of amazing cameos! Hell yeah.
References and inside jokes can only take you so far, but Astro Bot doesn’t disappoint as a platformer, either. There are constantly new, simple mechanics to pick up and use to get through tons of inventive, delightful levels. And those levels are varied and never overstay their welcome, which can also be said of the game itself. There is a ton for you to do, but it never felt bloated or rote. Many of the levels were pretty straightforward, but there were definitely some challenging levels and parts, too. Those PlayStation Shapes levels took me a try or two. Or three. Dozen. I also love the return of all of the detailed, realistic models of PlayStation hardware, especially in the final level where it all comes together in a massive cosmic assault. And, yeah, the ending made me weep like a lil baby. I love this game, and I can’t wait for more people to play it and experience the joy.
Mister Mosquito
Part of PlayStation’s legacy, in my opinion, is taking chances on quirky, unique titles. Noby Noby Boy and Katamari Damacy come to mind, as does Mister Mosquito. I’ve had my eye out for a decently priced used copy of this game for years. I recently bought the Japanese version because the cover art is hilarious (and I’m hoping to someday be able to play it and understand the language). But an English copy has eluded me to this point, which is why I was shocked to see PlayStation was releasing it for PS Plus! This game is very weird, and not just because you’re a mosquito going around sucking blood. The story, writing, voice acting… all weird and wonderful. I remember playing my friend’s copy when it came out and feeling like it gets pretty challenging like halfway through. That’s still true, but with the trusty rewind function now in play, I was able to get pretty far this time around. And trophies! Always a nice perk, especially when added to older games. Now if only Square Enix would port Chrono Trigger…
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
This is another game where I was glad I didn’t have to write a review for it. As with FFXVI, my opinion about Dragon Age: The Veilguard as an RPG is markedly different from my opinion about it as a Dragon Age game. Let me get the whiny stuff out of the way first. The art style never grew on me. I was so hyped when the trailer for this game dropped. I’ve been playing Bioware games since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and I’ve loved almost every game they’ve put out. KotOR? Banger. Jade Empire? Banger. Mass Effect and Dragon Age? B-b-b-bangers. There is something about the classic Bioware formula that I couldn’t get enough of. So when the trailer for Veilguard dropped and it looked like they were drawing inspiration from Fortnite and other stylized, cartoony popular games, I can’t deny I cringed. How do you go from a grimdark, realistic style to… this? It changes the entire tone of the game, evident by the game further leaning into humor, quips, and Marvel-like cheeky exchanges. I don’t mind a bit of that, and there was some of it in previous Dragon Age games. But this felt like too much of a shift for me. I thought maybe I’d get used to it after a while, once the gameplay and story hooked me. Nope. I wouldn’t say I “hated” it, but I certainly didn’t like it, and it’s hard when you have such a history with a series not to feel a little bitter and burned. This all might sound superficial, but I do have one slightly more significant gripe. That Bioware formula that I love? It’s here, to be sure. But it doesn’t feel like they’re making much progress in expanding and refining it? If you look at their previous games, you see that in each game they’re pushing things a little further, allowing you to romance more people or making it more natural, trying to flesh out their social systems more and more, pushing the envelope with regards to the romance scenes (remember the “Sexbox” debacle?). The romance and social systems in this game were fine. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy them. But after waiting so long for a new Bioware game, and a big return to a beloved series, I was hoping for more progress and improvement on the formula I love so much.
Okay, phew. If you’re still here and don’t hate me too much, I do have some very positive things to say about the game as well. As I said, I was disappointed in it as a Dragon Age sequel (especially for being in development for so long), but I did have a great time with it as an RPG. Similarly, I didn’t like the art style for a Dragon Age sequel, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful and had some gorgeous vistas and awesome character design. But let me back up a bit and start at the beginning, with my Rook. Because I loved the Grey Warden lore and main storyline from the first game, I chose to also be a Grey Warden here. My background felt like it fit so naturally into the game world and plots, so kudos to the creative team because I’m guessing the other backgrounds feel similarly tailor-made for the greater narrative. I also generally tried to make my Rook look like me, as I always do, which made for a fun scene where I (Rook) meet myself (Inquisitor) from the last game (and in Inquisition I [Inquisitor] met me [Warden]).
As for companions and allies, I was of course thrilled to see Morrigan return in a somewhat prominent role. I haven’t written a Video Game Crushes post on her yet, but she is probably among my favorite romance partners in gaming. She’s a strong, scary, sexy goth witch that can turn into a dragon! A very specific kind of Kryptonite for me, maybe? I was, of course, bummed that I once again could not romance her in this sequel. And it wasn’t even like she was like “I can’t, my great love Warden Joey is waiting for me at home.” At least then I could nod with bittersweet appreciation that the me from the first game is still with her. Nope. None of the romance options in Veilguard can compare to my Witch of the Wilds, but I ended up being pretty happy with my romance with Neve. She is gorgeous, talented, a cool detective, and she has a sexy accent. A small thing I really appreciated was how she gave me the nickname “Trouble” halfway through the game, then kept referring to me by it as the story progressed. One of my complaints about the romances in previous Bioware games is that they didn’t feel as pervasive as I’d have liked. Like, this is my new true love and we’ve expressed our deep affection for one another and then… we just treat each other like coworkers most of the time? Veilguard doesn’t quite fully solve that problem (it’s not an easy one to solve, if you think about all the writing and extra scripting it would require), but it’s a simple and elegant solution in the short term.
You know who else I loved? Well, yes, Assan. And my man Manfred! Definitely. But his master, Emmrich, has to be one of my favorite Dragon Age characters ever. I love that he’s this badass necromancer, but actually very soft-spoken and kind? He has such reverence for the arts he practices and both life and death. He’s charming, wise, and has a great sense of humor. And, yeah, having Manfred with him for most of the game doesn’t hurt. Emmrich’s companion quest, becoming a necromancer, was incredible. I love how they treated the role and made it about so much more than just revive-dead-get-power. I felt so proud of him for going through the process and honored that he allowed me to accompany him. And the fight with the giant mech-like skeleton? The council of necromancers? The Necropolis? All rad as hell. It was a very tough choice when it came time to decide the fate of Manfred, but ultimately I feel like we made the right call in allowing him to rest. RIP, rock-paper-scissors buddy.
Speaking of tough choices, I have to say I really dislike when games force you to make an impossible choice that results in something bad either way. I understand it creates tension and a huge rise in drama and can sometimes be reflective of reality, but… come on. It feels sadistic. I say this because I absolutely resented having to make the choice between Harding and Davrin/Assan. Davrin rubbed me the wrong way at first, but once we got into his companion quests and saving the griffons, I came around. And I love Assan, so much. The choice between them was spoiled for me a bit earlier, so for hours I was convinced I would choose to sacrifice Harding. I liked her, but… Assan, man. So innocent. So cute. But when the time came, literally at the last minute, I chose to allow Davrin and Assan to make the ultimate sacrifice. Davrin saw it as part of his destiny, and we saved Assan’s family and the future of all griffons, so it just felt like the “right” thing to do. Damn it.
I can fix her.
Okay, let me shotgun some thoughts and move on. I did like the combat. I didn’t love the loot system. It’s made for people who love builds, and that’s not really me. I don’t like putting a lot of work and time into doing a quest or exploring an area just to find a flashy chest that contains a piece of gear I’ll never use because it’s not for my build. And that was like 80%+ of the gear chests I opened. There were some cool weapons and armor, though. I rocked the Mass Effect suit for most of the game. So many dragons. Very fun fights. Was Isabela always this fine? Because holy hell. I feel foolish, but I did not see the twist with Varric coming, which was a nice(?) surprise. I got the ending where you talk Solas into binding himself to the Veil. It might have been somewhat disappointing as a Dragon Age game, but I liked it enough as a game to get the platinum trophy, for what that’s worth.
Infinity Nikki
I’ve never been interested in dress-up games, but I am a fan of pretty things. The older I get, the more I like to just, like, look at pretty stuff. And this game seems filled with glitter and cute things, and it’s free to play, so I decided to give it a shot. I’ve played it for about 17 hours now, and I do have a few thoughts. It is, indeed, very cute. I don’t know much about fashion and style, but the dresses and outfits in this are so pretty. You can also groom pretty much any animal you see, so I get very excited when I see a new animal, like a horse-like creature, and rush to meet (and brush) it. The game is a collect-a-thon, which is mostly good. I haven’t gotten around to using much of it yet, but I do enjoy running around and grabbing the various (and plenty) shiny flowers and shells and such.
That said, there are so many materials and currencies in this game it’s head-spinning. The gameplay, in terms of traversal and combat, is very simple. The systems, for crafting, buying things, etc., are anything but simple. I’m slowly starting to understand them, but sheesh. And I think that is, in part, what will probably drive me to disengage eventually. It hasn’t required me to purchase anything to succeed at the main quest so far, but when games are centered around trying to get you to buy things and spend real money for in-game currency, it’s hard for me not to see it in every design choice. Is this mission impossible because they want me to buy something? Are the dresses I have access to not as pretty as they could be because they want me to purchase the prettier ones? I’m not condemning the game for these things yet, but I do wonder when I’ll run into that. For now, I’m content to run around, brush my little cuties, try on beautiful dresses, and do the fairly simple quests and puzzles.
LocoRoco
When I saw the LocoRoco level in Astro Bot, I thought, oh yeah, I never got around to checking that game out! I only got a PSP recently, so I never had the chance to play the original. I do remember the 1UP Show podcasters talking highly of it, though, back in the day. I downloaded the remastered version recently and I get what the hype was about. It’s a pretty simple puzzle game, which is good for a portable system, and it’s so cute and weird. The sounds the little LocoRoco make as they break apart and come back together, the way they sing along to some of the music, the annoying little Moja enemies, all great. I’ve only finished the first world so far, but I’ll definitely be going back to this one.
Never felt so represented in my life.
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
Will I go back to Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus after getting flustered as hell at the first Murray racing level? Probably, but I did have to step away from it for a bit. Things were going so smoothly, too. I’d beaten the first world, was enjoying the colorful art style, with the bold black outlines, I’d collected most of the clue bottles, and was just generally having a pretty good time. Even the Murray sniping level was really fun. But then that damned racing mission reared its head. I feel free to vent about it because when I looked online for tips, it seems like a common point of frustration for many players. And the nifty new-gen rewind feature doesn’t do much to help. Well, I’ll get back to it soon, and a friend who is a big Sly fan is stopping by tomorrow, so maybe with his guidance I’ll breeze through it and get back to what is otherwise a fun, nostalgic platformer.
Phasmophobia (PS5)
Ah, Phasmophobia. I wrote at some length about the game just over four years ago, when it was still in early access on Steam. I’d played for about 61 hours at that point, which felt like a lot. I’m now at 1,294 hours on PC, 155 hours on PS5. Yep. I wrote in that post about how this game scared me in a way no other game has. It made me stink-sweat, especially when I tried to play it by myself. And I can’t really explain why. I don’t believe in ghosts, so it’s not like I thought some apparition was going to pop out of the TV and possess my cat. It was just very unsettling. And now here I am, almost 1,500 hours later, and it’s become a comfort game for me that I still play at least once or twice a week. I was beyond stoked when they announced it was coming to console, and after about a year of delays, it finally landed this Halloween.
The first time I logged in and played with the DualSense instead of keyboard and mouse, it felt very weird. I was convinced it would take forever to get used to. But after tweaking the button mapping a bit, it felt a lot more natural. Some things don’t seem to look as good on PS5, like the DOTS projector, but some things (like lighting and some textures) look better to me. I was a little bummed that I was leaving behind my Steam profile and all that I’d accomplished on it, but it has been fun accomplishing those things again and being rewarded for it with trophies. I’m just six trophies shy of the platinum now. Three of those will happen pretty naturally (Demon kill, prestige level three, weekly challenges), but I am sort of dreading the grind that it’ll take to get the Apocalypse Challenge trophies. Regardless, I’m still having a blast hunting for ghosties with friends (I even convinced some of my PlayStation colleagues to try it with me! There was at least one uncontrolled yelp of fear, so I’m counting it as a win), and I hope to write about it again when Phasmophobia 2 hits PS6 in 2028.*
*Just kidding, I have zero insider knowledge about a sequel to Phasmophobia or PS5, sadly
Wingspan
I played the original (board game) version of Wingspan once, like, many months ago. Maybe over a year? I can’t quite remember the details, but I remember really digging it. It’s technically a competitive game, where you collect birds and eggs and complete goals to get points and win against other players. But it’s the kind of game, like Disney Villainous, where you have your own board and can just kind of focus on your own goals. So that’s what I did. I tried to collect and play birds that I liked. Blue jays, owls, mockingbirds, ravens, hawks, etc. I just liked looking at the incredible bird art and hearing their sounds with an app that scans the cards. I bought the PS5 version when it came out, but didn’t get around to playing it right away. I recently found myself playing the board game again, for what I think is only the second time ever, and I was like “why have I not played the console version again?” So I did.
And I play it exactly how I do the board game. I mind my own business and play cool birds to learn little facts about them and build out my compendium. I set it to one easy AI competitor and just go. It’s such a chill, relaxing game. The art is gorgeous, the music is soothing, and just playing to play new bird cards is so calming. I even went and bought the two expansions and have started playing with those in my decks. I don’t really understand the new goals/rules, but there are even more colorful little dinosaurs for me to scoop up, so it’s been well worth it.
I’m finishing the rough version of this post at 9:21pm on New Year’s Eve in my time zone, so I fulfilled my promise to myself to get it done before the new year, heh. Hopefully I can get it edited and up by midnight. Either way, if you’re reading this, I hope you had a great 2024 filled with amazing games and other fulfilling hobbies, and I hope your 2025 is even better. And let’s end with a Persona 3 Reload screenshot dump because I ended up uploading a ton, expecting I’d write a whole post about it, but now they have no home. So… welcome home, little screenshots.
Hello, dear Reader. And by “Reader,” I mean myself, checking this site in a month to re-read what I’ve written and cringing my own skin off. But, yes, hello, and welcome to another installment of “I’ve been busy and haven’t kept up with writing about what I’ve been playing so here’s a massive, rambling catch-up post.” You’re thrilled, I know, I can sense it all the way over here in sleepy Sycamore, Illinois. I’ve played a bunch of games since my last post, and this was meant to be a catch-all where I share thoughts on all of them. The problem is, I started with Baldur’s Gate 3 and, well, I just couldn’t stop writing about it. What makes Baldur’s Gate 3 such a magical experience (in part), is that it really gives you so many opportunities to make your own unique scenes and side stories. You and I may have played the same quest, but our stories of how they played out might vary wildly. I love that. So, with that, here are some of my favorite memories from this incredible game. [SPOILERS all over the place.]
Holy shit, where do I begin? I guess I should start by saying I’d never played any of the previous Baldur’s Gate games or Dungeons & Dragons, though I was passingly familiar with some of the core mechanics and themes. I own a few d20s and the idea of rolling them to determine things is pretty fun. But a year ago I would have said Baldur’s Gate 3 is very far from being on my radar. The previous games seemingly had an excellent reputation with PC RPG players, but that was a world I was mostly unfamiliar with. I didn’t have a PC that could run big, memory-intensive games for most of my life, so other than PC-to-console games like Knights of the Old Republic, I was fine with staying in my lane. The game started getting a ton of buzz just before release, though, and a couple friends were hyping it up and specifically saying it was “my kind of game” (because of all the smooching and the banging, I suspect). So, after I finished Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and some smaller indie games, I decided to dive in. And boy was the water deep.
Having very little knowledge about classes, races, etc., I mostly created my character with vibes (and some stat guidance from a friend). I went with a half-elf druid, largely because I love animals and wanted to talk to them, transform into them, and dole out both physical and magic damage. I also went with the Folk Hero background because my friend said it would synergize better with being a druid, otherwise I would have picked Soldier just because it’s truer to life and I tend to make characters that are pretty much heightened versions of myself. I want to talk about my specific experiences in each Act in some detail, so let me get my general thoughts out now. I was surprised by how much I loved Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s not perfect, but it deserves the hype that it got. It’s not exactly newb friendly, the late game bugs were frequent and (in a couple of instances) extreme, and some of the boss fights felt purposefully unbalanced. Gripes aside, the story was amazing, the characters were top-notch, voice acting was phenomenal, combat was usually very fun (after Act I, for me, anyway), the romances were excellent, and the level of flexibility and personalization when it comes to choices/paths through the game is unparalleled.
With that in mind, let me talk about my path through Act I. Early on I decided, against the advice of the internet and friends, that I wanted to do a completionist attempt. I knew it was impossible to do absolutely everything in a first playthrough, but many people said, “just play it fast and loose and make different choices when you play your next run!” Uh, no. There are far, far too many games I want to play right now, so my next playthrough, if there is one, may be months or years from now. Like Veruca Salt, I want it now, I want it right now. I also want to own a goose, but I digress. So, I used a guide here and there when it felt like I might miss something. I got Shadowheart right away but wasn’t sold on her as my romance partner for a while. She was very quiet and, frankly, suspicious for a chunk of Act I, and I didn’t love the whole being-in-a-cult thing. I recruited an ungrateful Lae’zel, yoinked Gale out of some mystic portal, and let Astarion bite me at camp. Was that a romantic thing? It seems like it might have been the first step in pursuing him as a partner, but I was mostly doing it for practical reasons. In his pitch about his strength and need to feed, he made a solid point. Two of them, actually, that then went into my neck. Badum csh. I also found Karlach and immediately took a liking to her.
When I think of my time in Act I, though, what really stands out is my obsession with saving the Owlbear Mother and all the bombastic drama that came with it. When I approached the Owlbear cave, I was met with bodies, signs of a brutal fight, and ominous sounds coming from the mouth of the cave. As I entered and stepped over even more gored bodies, I was overcome with a kind of fascinated fear. I was ready for a fight but eager to find out what had caused such chaos. When the Owlbear Mother stepped from the shadows, eyeing me cautiously, I felt my heart swell and shrink. She was injured from the waves of absolute asshats that had seemingly attacked her, and she communicated to me that she was just protecting her cub. I respectfully retreated but immediately looked up how to save her. If everyone and anyone was coming after her, as it seems they were, I had to stop them. What I learned would outline my entire Act I playthrough.
As with many things I looked up, there were lots of conflicting opinions and experiences. Some people said it was impossible to save the owlbear mom, some said they had done it by completely eradicating the goblin population in the area. Given that I was already tasked with infiltrating or toppling the local goblin camp anyway, I took up the challenge. The problem? Since I had already triggered the owlbear encounter, I had to do it all without long resting. The next several hours of my time was dedicated to just that. I was level 3 at the time, which meant I was avoiding some of the other goblin encounters near the outposts south and east of the camp proper. I decided to sidestep those for now and freed Sazza the goblin in the refugee camp because she promised me entry to the main goblin camp. She kept her word (on that count), so I made it in and decided to try poisoning the local drinking cauldron because I had read that it “wipes out the camp without any combat necessary!” I turned into a beautiful little kitty, slipped the poison into the pot, and watched as… only a handful of goblins collapsed dead. Welp. At my level, I really wasn’t sure I could take out big groups, so I had to find a way to wipe out the entire camp bit by goblin-y bit.
After taking out most of the front courtyard, I moved to a side area and barely scraped by in defeating some sleeping goblins, then snuck inside. A goblin priestess stopped me and offered to brand me with the Mark of the Absolute. I refused but agreed to chat with her in her office. She was, as I gathered, one of the three goblin leaders I had to take out, so getting her alone seemed ideal. She saw through me and after I failed a dialog check, she attacked. It took me a few attempts, but I was able to take her out before she made too much noise. After isolating and killing a few small groups of goblins, including those watching over a captured druid named Halsin, I found my way to a large throne room occupied by another leader, Dror Ragzlin, and his men. I was feeling a little cocky at that point having taken out so many goblins without resting, so I strolled in and was promptly, painfully, and thoroughly humbled. I would come back to him when I could free Halsin and have him help me. For now, I moved on to the third goblin leader, a drow named Minthara.
Or, as I wished I could call her after our introduction, Minethara. Because I wanted her to be mine. See what I did there? Anyway, let’s move on. If you’ve read any of my Video Game Crushes posts, you might understand by this point that my taste in women swings wildly between cute and coy and mean and sexy. Lady D? Yes. Princess Peach? Also, yes. Minthara is clearly in the mean camp. In my very first encounter with her, eavesdropping on her talking to Sazza and an underling, it was clear that she was a bad, cruel, malevolent person. But, and this is important… she was real hot. Did I have to kill her? Insert sad, misty-eyed emoji here. I turned to the internet once again and found that no, I didn’t have to kill her to progress the story. In fact, the game had just been patched so that I could knock her unconscious, clear out the goblin camp to progress the “good” storyline, and then recruit her into my party later. Huzzah, as the kids say! It sounds so simple typed out like that. At level 3, without any rest, I found it nigh impossible. Part of the problem was that I was just a widdle baby and she was a badass warrior queen with a mean swing (and my heart). The other problems were the goblins in the area preceding her office, and the group on the other side of the wall. Fighting any one of them often alerted the others, leading to failure after failure.
Eventually, I was able to lure a couple of the goblins from the pre-office area away and murder them, then take out the goblins in the next room without alerting my future bae. I saved just before taking her on, and it still took several tries because I had to knock her out and couldn’t use offensive spells, but I eventually won the day. She rested peacefully (okay, maybe a poor word choice after I just clobbered her repeatedly with my staff) while I stole her very cool armor, a parasite, and… her underwear. Hey. Don’t judge me. Have you heard the things people thirst over in this game? If I’m going to horny jail, I’m taking ya’ll with me. Anyway, with Minethara knocked out and the goblin numbers dwindling, I pressed on. Each new encounter tested my fledgling battle skills, and my potion supply was hurting. I saved Volo, found a secret room, tried to free an angry goblin that didn’t want to be saved, and eventually freed Halsin and brought him with me to face Dror Ragzlin. It took luring a couple of his henchgoblins outside of the room and dropping his ass with some grease, but eventually we defeated him and his annoying little gobknobbers.
I felt a wave of relief at this point. I had defeated all three goblin leaders without long resting. It was almost over! What a fool I was, dear reader. It was far from over. Turns out goblins don’t like when you murder their friends. Or leaders. Or steal their boss’ underwear. The room where I encountered the priestess still had goblins in it, the hall leading outside had guards, there was a big ol’ ogre and a couple stray goblins outside the front door, plus the outposts just outside of the camp. Fucking goblins, man. I took a breath, gathered myself, and kept fighting. I outmaneuvered the door guards, overwhelmed the ogre, and outflanked the outskirts crews. It wasn’t as easy as I’m making it sound. It took a good long while, more of my quickly vanishing healing items, and several restarts. I even went back and did a second, comprehensive sweep of the camp just to make sure I got everyone. Once I felt satisfied, and after many long hours, I headed for the owlbear cave. The mom was still there, so I camped at the mouth of the cave, ran excitedly in, and… she was gone. My characters commented that she must have been killed by overeager hunters or goblins. I was heartbroken. Worse, the Owlbear Cub, who I remember reading I could save and tempt to my camp, was also gone. Taken to the goblin camp, supposedly. I went to look for it but there was nothing but piles of dead goblins, killed by my tired and bloodied hands. All that work. All that planning and pain and panty stealing. All for nothing. It seemed I had doomed not only the owlbear mom, but the cub as well. What a fucking day.
The Owlbear Cub did make its way to my camp anyway, though, which was the biggest fucking relief. I also coaxed Scratch the dog to join us, plus Halsin said he would join us later. Before I jump to Act II, let me briefly detail my encounter with one of the biggest pains in my half-elf ass: Auntie Ethel. I’d gotten a side quest to investigate a missing woman, who turned out to be Mayrina, who was actually trying to give her unborn baby to Auntie Ethel to bring her boyfriend back. Normally I fully believe women should have the right to choose to do what they want with their bodies, but in this case, mostly to spite Auntie Ethel, I would make an exception. Making my way deep into the hag’s lair was just one layer of annoyance. Her damned traps were a nuisance, especially at such a low level. When I finally made my way to her, she absolutely roasted me. Split into several versions of herself, overwhelmed me with magic, all the while her minions pelted me. It was chaos, and none of it in my favor. I tried again and again, but the closest I came was getting her HP to about 30%, and that attempt felt like sheer luck. So, I left and went on my gobliny adventures, then hit level 6 not too long after, which unlocked the owlbear transformation for my druid. That’s right. It was time for vengeance.
Look, I know Auntie Ethel had nothing to do with the owlbear mom’s death. But I had a lot of pent-up anger and frustration over it, and Auntie Ethel was an evil, annoying, haggard-ass hoebag that needed to be stopped. So, I came back and unleashed my feathery fury on her. I know I was only a couple of levels higher, but in my owlbear form I felt godly. My secret weapon was my ability to knock enemies down. I would perform a Crushing Leap near Auntie Ethel, knocking her on her warty ass, then as soon as she got up, I’d owlbear slap her and knock her right back down. When I tell you I crushed this lady, I stomped her baby-eating, Multiplicity-starring, fury-inducing ass into dust. And then I used Speak to the Dead to bring her back to life just so I could watch the light leave her eyes again. And then Mayrina was like “lol, like, why did you do that I hate you.” OKAY YOU’RE WELCOME, LADY.
Anyway, on to Act II we go. During the big party between acts, both Lae’zel and Astarion wanted to hook up. As did Gale and Karlach, but they weren’t nearly as surprising. I thought Lae’zel and Astarion both hated my guts, mostly because anytime I did anything they were like “ew, no.” I’d be like “we should rest for the night” and one or both of them would be like “uh, hard disapprove, sleeping is for the weakest of little bitches.” Uh, what? Okay, let’s help this poor, injured animal. “Disapprove, torturing it and slowly draining its lifeblood is the only proper way to dispose of this wretch.” Whatever, man. So, I really thought they would be the last people to try and jump on my dick, but there they were, first in line. I won’t lie, I’ve already admitted to stealing undergarments: I absolutely let Lae’zel show me what she’s working with and then reloaded and pretended it didn’t happen. For story purposes, I didn’t sleep with anyone. I had warmed up to Shadowheart by that point, and as my luck would have it, she was the only one who didn’t want a piece of this. Sigh. We weren’t dating by that point, so I did briefly entertain the thought that I might woo one of the most beautiful people in the game, who just happened to be at the party: Alfira the tiefling bard. Aside from some all-too-brief semi-maybe-possibly-flirting, we sadly went our separate ways.
Starting Act II, I felt, for the first time, capable. Between learning this very complex game, being low level for a fair while, and my whole no-rest-for-the-stupid goblin camp ordeal, Act I had me feeling all kinds of weak. But hitting level 6, getting my owlbear form, and smacking down Auntie Ethel made me feel like a god. Who could stand against such a force of nature? The NPCs were talking a big game about the Underdark, but they were talking to the hag-slaying, goblin-decimating, knicker-stealing god. The Underdark should be quaking in its dimly lit boots. I’d made a mental note to check out a locked door in the goblin camp, and it just so happened to lead right to an abandoned Selûnite outpost in the Underdark. Bingo. We picked our way through the outpost, finding a bunch of oil barrels but not much of interest. It seems there had been some kind of major battle here at some point, as near the end of the outpost there was a massive, locked gate and a breach in the side wall. We went through the hole and down a path to some ruins with a group of petrified dudes. Suckers. For the first time I glanced past them and over a steep ledge to see the glowing mushrooms and twisted landscape of the Underdark. A new dominion, mine for the taking. We just have to – uh, excuse me. What is this floating up in front of…
Holy mother of teeth and eyeballs. “What the actual FUCK is this thing?” I thought, very bravely and with no fear at all, please don’t listen to any rumors you’ve heard to the contrary. This massive mouthball screamed at me and I mustered up all my newly found strength and proceeded to deliver an almighty ass whooping. Sorry, typo. I should have said HE delivered an almighty ass whooping. Because my ass was cooked in a matter of seconds. Before I could even get on all fours to shift into an owlbear, this spherical mouth breather was zapping and crapping all over my team. He started un-petrifying the frozen dudes and I thought “hey, cool, fresh allies.” Uh, no. Fresh jackasses that proceeded to attack us WITH THE GIANT EYEBALL. Thanks, guys. Real cool. Beams were flying, I was crying, everything went to shit within seconds. It was a disaster.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t as much of an all-powerful god as I thought I might be. But I did have a little bit of a brain, so I decided to get strategic. After several failed tests, I decided to take the coward’s way out and set a glorious, fiery trap. Remember those oil barrels? There were a ton of them, so I slowly, so slowly, picked each one up and carried it over to the narrow path leading to the ruins. There, I stacked them high and wide. My plan was to trigger the Spectator (as I learned it was called – not “ugly eye fuck mouth,” as I had taken to calling it in my more panicky moments), lure it with one character to the oil stack, then boom. Blow it higher than that one time I took mushrooms and thought my lungs were melting. My party at that point was me, Shadowheart, Astarion, and Karlach. I left my crew in the outpost, safe and sound, and once the oil barrels were in place I slinked down, caught the Spectator’s eye (get it?), and hightailed back toward the breach in the wall. The Spectator zapped a couple of guys from their stony slumber, then started making its way toward me. Good, good. Come to me, eyehole. When it got to the barrels, I hit it with a fireball and BOOM! Well, more like “whoosh,” unfortunately. The explosion wasn’t as, well, explosive as I’d have liked. It was more like a giant fireball that singed the Spectator’s eyebrow off. It seriously only lost like 10% of its health. And now it was headed our way with two angry elves in tow. Cool. Cool cool cool.
I retreated through the hole in the wall and regrouped with the fam. Just as I was trying to put a positive spin on the situation, the two elves showed up. Luckily for us, the Spectator seemed to float off somewhere. So, we focused on the dudes. Given our environmental advantage, they weren’t too tough. One of them had a bunch of HP but I had Karlach wail away on him while Astarion gave the other guy the old one-two-stabaroo and I bounced back and forth between them with Shadowheart healing and supporting. They were dead in no time. You know what? Maybe I WAS as powerful and badass as I thought I might be. Then, like a bully with great comedic timing, the Spectator floated down from above. It had gone up and over a wall I didn’t even know was open to the world. Now he was in a small, enclosed space with us and, evidently, very pissed about his eyebrow. I was so tempted to reload right there, before he could drift down and blink our party out of existence, but I thought maybe I’d learn something in a noble death. So, I had Astarion circle around for a sneak attack. Karlach drew him forward and started bashing away, I swiped away with my big ol’ murder mittens, and I even had Shadowheart focus on her best spells rather than healing. And in the blink of a massive eye (see what I did there? Because “blink of an eye” is a phrase meaning very fast, but the Spectator also has a very big eye, so I was kind of playing with words there. Furthermore, I interrupted a bad pun about something happening very quickly to over-explain my terrible joke, which is prolonging the delivery, adding a bit of irony at the expense of reader experience), he was dead. Rest in piss, ugly eye fuck mouth.
Anyway, another standout event in Act II for me was recruiting my girl, Minthara. I tried to do all my exploring and side quests before heading to Moonrise Tower, so I’d already freed a pixie, killed a spider dude (he attacked me first!), met the dickish He Who Was and his asshat bird (by “met” I mean did their quest and then killed them), took out some gnarly bosses (and their sexy nurses – I can’t be the only one who was into them!), battled it out big time at the Last Light Inn (lost one of the tieflings, RIP), and more. When I finally found my way to Moonrise, I walked into Minthara standing before Ketheric Thorm, naked and covered in Sazza’s blood (whoops), pleading for her life. Look, I’m not here to judge her for whatever she may have done. Technically speaking I didn’t see her commit any crime outside of being criminally hot. Am I cherry picking to defend her because she’s an absolute smokeshow? The better question is why don’t you mind your business? Anyway, I step in on her behalf and convince them to throw her in the dungeon, where I quickly follow to free her. Once again, I stroll right into the jail like a beefed-up man-god, ready to slay away, and once again I am quickly humbled by the annoying magic users down there. Eventually I’m able to free my girl and we jet. Somehow, she’s not as grateful as I’d have liked, but she’s also not as angry as I’d have expected given that I knocked her out, stole her cool clothes, and currently have her underwear stuffed in my pocket. Let’s just call it even.
Despite my thirsting over that power-hungry murder queen, my actual relationship with Shadowheart was… progressing? Kind of? I was supportive of her or avoided engaging with much of her faith talk, but eventually she started questioning her faith and realizing she was being manipulated. There was hope. I especially liked helping her complete the Gauntlet of Shar, and when it came time to decide the fate of the Nightsong, I left the decision up to her. It was hers to make. And, to my great surprise, she threw the spear away! To me, that showed a lot of growth. Nice one, Shadowbae. Speaking of baes (this game supplies an endless number of them), I was also immediately smitten with a certain devilish little liar who had trapped Wyll in a pretty unfair contract. That’s right, I was down bad for Mizora. If it did nothing else, this game just confirmed for me that I like a sexy mean lady. I can’t even be ashamed at this point. Anyway, after one last side quest (meeting a massive demon named Yurgir who, if I’m being honest, seemed pretty chill so I talked him into killing his minions before helping him break his contract with Raphael. More on them later), I headed into the final battle at Moonrise Tower with Minthara, Shadowheart, and Karlach at my back. It was bloody encounter after bloody encounter, but we fought our way through the castle, down into the flayer-y bowels, and to our final clash with the wannabe-immortal Thorm. He talked a lot of shit earlier but was suddenly like “well, I mean, I don’t want to be bad, I just kinda gotta *sad misty-eyed emoji*.” We didn’t buy it, so we kicked his ass (into a pit of lava or something) and were on to the next.
On the way to Act III and Baldur’s Gate, I did go back and complete the Mountain Pass route as well. After completing most of the Underdark and Shadow Cursed Lands, we moved on to the local Githyanki Creche. The friendly, welcoming Githyanki Creche. At this point, I still wasn’t really getting along with Lae’zel. I was mostly trying to be a good, wholesome, horny character, and she wasn’t having it. Well, she was having the horny bit. But she was aggressive, harsh, and pretty xenophobic, if we’re being honest. I put her in my party for the Creche because it just seemed right, plus she might act as a much-needed diplomat or envoy to help the brash, racist Githyanki see me as an ally. Someone who only wants to help. Yeah, no. From the minute we approached the Creche, they were absolute assholes to me. Worse, they were assholes to Lae’zel. If there’s one way to instantly get me to sympathize with a party member I don’t usually vibe with, it’s to be an asshole to them. Lae’zel may be an unapproachable, stubbornly close-minded curmudgeon, but she’s MY unapproachable, stubbornly close-minded curmudgeon. Every slight, every rude assumption about our skill and intentions, I took note. One of my absolute favorite things to do in these kinds of power fantasy RPGs (besides smoochin’, of course), is to make mean people pay. With their lives, if I have to. And that’s exactly what I did. I wanted to avoid bloodshed, I really did (not), but after I stopped a doctor from killing Lae’zel to get her parasite, a roomful of Githyanki poured in to try and kill us. Silly little beans. I squashed them. Lae’zel still wasn’t convinced that her own people had no regard for her, so we moved on to the Inquisitor, who promptly tried to kill us. We slapped him and his men down, then Vlaakith showed up and after giving her a little sass, I decided to keep things friendly with Lae’zel and played nice with her. After going into the Astral Prism and learning the truth about Vlaakith from my Dream Guardian, we had to hightail it out of there. Problem was, we’d killed a Githyanki doctor. And captain. And Inquisitor. There may have been a less violent way to escape, but the way they talked to my party and disrespected my girl Lae’zel (yeah, that’s right, after this whole ordeal I was a ride or die Lae’zel defender) meant I was ready for some retribution. I told myself I would stop the slaughter only if Lae’zel got upset. She did not. So, I Anakin Skywalkered their asses. I did leave the nursery untouched because I thought Lae’zel would be really mad, but I’ve since learned that there aren’t actually any eggs to crush. Welp. In the end, Lae’zel was not upset but she also wasn’t exactly ready to defy her queen just yet. It’s okay, Lae’Lae (that’s what I call her since we’re bros now. Not to her face). We’ll get there.
Act III opens with a circus, which I’m always a fan of in games. The Circus of the Last Days and its minigames and activities reminded me a lot of the Millennial Fair in Chrono Trigger, for some reason. Maybe it was the vibe, maybe it was the content, and maybe it was the side quest where you have to scour the world to collect a clown’s body parts so that he can be reanimated (a side quest in Chrono Chross). That can’t be a coincidence, right? Anyway, I had a blast at the circus, particularly with the damnable djinn, Akabi. I’d seen a TikTok explaining how to “win” his rigged game of chance, so I put this to use and had such a fun side excursion to Jurassic Pa- er, generic dinosaur land. I had only just recently unlocked the Dilophosaurus form with my druid, so this was a great time to test it out. Being without my party, I was a bit worried that I might get overwhelmed, but I was fine. I was more than fine. I was a fucking acid-spitting dinosaur. I could attack twice, did extra acid damage, had a ranged attack, and could jump on fools from a distance. Hell yeah. I tore through my fellow dinos, got an awesome legendary trident, and skedaddled back to laugh in the djinn’s face. In my mind. The game didn’t let me do it. There was also a station with a very sexy Poison Ivy looking match maker who asked Shadowheart and I some questions before showing us a sweet little romantic scene. To be honest, I actually turned to Minthara first, saying “Shall we, my dear?” To which she replied, “No. And if you refer to me as ‘my dear’ again, I will cut out your tongue.” Ah, love. So fickle. Anyway, after the scene played out, Poison Ivy turned into Poison Knife-y! Er, Bloody Knife-y? I dunno. She turned into Orin the Red, taunting me over… I don’t quite remember. I was too busy falling in love. YES, okay, I know, I am the worst. Orin is not, like, misguided, reformable bad, like Minthara. Orin is, like, sadistic, evil incarnate bad. Minthra might step on me if I asked her to. Orin would step on me in my sleep. On, like, my junk. Wearing six-inch bladed heels. That are on fire and somehow also made of bees. People seem to “get it” when I say I’m into Minthara. When I say I’m into Orin (at least in a superficial, one-night-stand if I survive kind of way, to be clear!), I get no recognition. No “yeah, I get it.” Sigh. What am I gonna do with myself.
We finally made it into the city, and the bustling metro was everything I hoped it would be. There were houses, and buildings, and people. And stuff. It was a city, okay? I found a secret door in the side of a building, re-rolled a million times to break into it, and found an immortal mummy (that I later came back to kill, like you do). I got into an intense and spectacular magic fight in and around a fireworks shop. I tried to hit the fireworks on the top floor from a roof across the street, but the explosion only killed half of the baddies. The other half were less than enthused about my little “prank,” so we got into a very fun magic battle over the streets of Baldur’s Gate, with the city guards passing in the streets below, acting like they don’t see the fireballs flying back and forth above them. Eventually we leapt and teleported over and cleared them out, but not after more epic fighting. It was pretty sweet. Speaking of pretty sweet, after many hours of will-we-won’t-we flirting, I finally hooked up with Shadowheart! And then we went to a brothel that had a pair of drow twins that were apparently very good at their job. I didn’t even say anything and Shadowheart busts out a “I’m down if you are.” What? She has sex one time and she’s already ready to jump into a foursome? The old four-headed horny horse? A human sexipede? The famous quadra-jangle-tangle? Okay, I’ll stop. But I was shocked by Shadowheart’s sudden willingness to jump into bed with these very sexy drows. So, yeah, we did it. I tried to go again, and the twins said they needed “recovery time.” Amateurs.
I may have sexed up Shadowheart and two gorgeous drows, but what about Minthara or Mizora? I’d read that Mizora will approach anyone with a pulse on some lucky night. She propositioned all of my friends who played, and some of them didn’t even like her. I have a pulse… but no luck, apparently, because she never came to me. Too close to home, Larian. Too close to home. Likewise, I never managed to have sex with Minthara, either. She confessed her love, yes, which was all-too welcome. But after I (saved, so that I could reload and not mess things up with Shadowheart, and) openly welcomed her admission and told her I felt the same, she didn’t show up to shag me at night like she was supposed to. I’d waited hours to enjoy the privilege of engaging in sinful coitus with these two viciously sexy bad girls… only to be snubbed. Ain’t that just the way.
Speaking of Shadowheart and Minthara, one of my favorite experiences in the whole game happened in Act III. A random dude approached us and started talking shit to my girl. Some unresolved Church of Shar drama. Shadowheart was, by this point, fully reformed and had abandoned that path, so I was all in on heading straight to the Cloister of Sombre Embrace and “clearing things up” (kicking some ass). Okay, I would have actually been okay with a peaceful resolution, espcially if it’s what Shadowheart wanted. But no. As with many groups in Baldur’s gate, these sassy bitches just wanted a fight. So, we gave it to them. I’m talking big again but when the fighting broke out, so did the shit in my pants. We stood in a large chamber, surrounded by over twenty underlings. Twenty! Worse, many were magic users, so as soon as the fighting started we were being pelted by all kinds of nonsense, including constant Darkness and Bone Chill. My strategy was to leap ahead and get right in Viconia DeVir’s (cool name) face with Karlach and bap bap bap her with a triple hit to soften her up. Yeah, uh, no. She had Protection, so my big hitter was suddenly stranded in the middle of a room full of enemies. Not good. We needed to even the odds, and quick, so as my druid I used the spell I’d learned from the Necromancy of Thay that allowed me to summon four Ghouls, I summoned a Spirit Weapon with Shadowheart, and I transformed into my Dilophosaurus form. Okay, now’s it’s 20+ vs 9ish. Not bad, not bad.
Except, yeah, bad. Karlach fell the next turn as me, Shadowheart, Minthara, and our summoned friends were trying to get a foothold in the entryway. Then Viconia hit us with some massive explosive spell that took a chunk of our health and completely took out three Ghouls and the Spirit Weapon. We were completely overwhelmed and outmatched. I started doing that thing where I plan the next fight as I’m losing this one. “well, NEXT time, I’ll start like this…” Enemies were increasingly surrounding us, and we were hurting, unable to heal because of the damned Bone Chill. I teleported Minthara out of there, hoping to find cover behind a column where I could chug some potions or something. Our last Ghoul fell, and Shadowheart and I were unable to stand up to the horde around us. By the time we fell, we’d probably taken out 5-7 enemies. Viconia and around 15 enemies still stood, some of them chasing Minthara. She had less than 10hp at that point. I knew death was coming but I was determined to take down as many of these turds as I could out of pure spite. If I could, my new goal was just to make it back to the entrance, where Viconia was, and bury my spear into her chest before succumbing to the rest of the fiends. I chugged a potion and got back up to around 85hp before they closed in, then I purposely led them on a bit of a chase getting back to the stairs to thin the crowd a bit. When I made it back, I faced Viconia and channeled all my rage into a final double strike. Crit, baby. She fell. As did more spells and attacks from all around, knocking me down to 4hp. I was cooked, as the kids say. Unless…
…I chugged one of the only two Potions of Invisibility I had, not expecting it to work. These absolute dorkhammers fell for it. Immediately they were all “where is she!? What kind of trickery is this?” They cast Reveal Enemy a couple of times, missing me with both, before giving up. They started to meander back toward their posts as I healed up. I was still outnumbered and would be beset by more Darkness and Bone Chill as soon as I started back in, but I had to do it. As I said, I would take as many out as I could and then reload and try an actual strategy. I took aim at the nearest lackey and ba-bam, he dead. This alerted the others, who immediately began returning to the steps. Minthara could strike twice, frequently crits, and hits super hard, so before the group fully surrounded me again, I was able to take down two more baddies. They did surround me, though, and now it was something like 12 vs 1. Let’s go, bitches. Call an ambulance… but not for me! You see, though they circled me and threw everything they had left at me, they could. Not. Hit me. Minthara was dodging blows like rich people dodge taxes. I saved a short clip on my PS5, and it ends just after the 10th miss in a row. I think it was a combination of the attributes of her cool armor and shield, plus Aura of Protection and Reactions, BUT I like to imagine it was a red-hot rage that caused her to transcend this dimension and vibrate between worlds to dodge these weak, meager blows. Either way, in the end she stood in a pile of corpses, having defeated about 15 enemies on her own. Bad. Ass.
Speaking of tough fights, I’d heard that the Raphael fight was perhaps the hardest in the game, so after the near-shit-show at the Cloister of Sombre Embrace, I decided it would be a good time to head to the House of Hope. I really liked that whole section. Did I sleep with the succubus? Why, yes. Yes, I did. But I also liked the general vibe and mood, set in part by speaking to the various NPCs, filling out Raphael’s personality and backstory (turns out? Not a great dude). After the previously described fight, my big battle with Raphael wasn’t all that bad, actually. I took him out first try, helped in part by our old friend Yurgir! I was hoping he’d tank a lot of the damage Raphael doled out, but he stayed invisible for most of the fight, though he did get in some solid hits. The fight ended with me, Minthara, and Karlach pressing Raphael into a corner and pummeling the shit out of him, as it should be. It was fun fighting with Yurgir, though, and he agreed to help me in the final battle! What a cutie patootie. Which reminds me (not really, bleh), our old friend and skanky-ass-suck-bag-of-the-year-recipient, Auntie Ethel, returned in Act III, ready for me to kick her putrid face in again. It took a few tries because the first time it bugged out and Vanra wouldn’t leave the room and the second time she just kicked my ass, but once I chose the owlbear form over the Dilophosaurus and just kept knocking her wrinkled ass over with my leap attack, she went down for good. God, I hate her. I also fought Orin, who is, as discussed, a very, very bad lady. But who I did not get to smooch, which still makes me sad.
Speaking of the final battle, it was certainly epic but also quite buggy for me. I encountered a bug where one of my characters died for no reason as we went through the portal to face Mother Brain, er, Netherbrain, then after beating the section on my third try, the game wasn’t sure who’d become the Mind Flayer. I chose to free Orpheus and ask him to become the Mind Flayer, which given how quickly he agreed, even with a little sass, I didn’t feel too bad about. I was determined to save Karlach and I sure as hell wasn’t become a Mind Flayer, so it seemed like the best outcome. But after defeating the Netherbrain, Orpheus was still in his animal form going into the cutscene on the dock and I think maybe that confused the game? Or something? Half of my party spoke as if I was the one who’d made the transformation, like Minthara saying “Although in your case, the transformation may be an improvement, iblith,” to which I could respond with things like “I did what I had to do” or “It’s all right. I like what I’ve become.” I didn’t become anything, though? But the ending I got was the correct one, meaning everything else played out as if Orpheus became the Mind Flayer and we destroyed the Netherbrain, so I guess it all ended up alright.
Well, maybe. In the epilogue, where you’re hanging out with all your friends, Gale showed up as an arrogant, condescending god? I don’t remember making decisions that might have led to that, but maybe I missed something? I had always encouraged him to stay grounded and not meddle in the gods’ affairs, but I must have messed something up. Everyone else was cool. Apparently I started an animal rescue with Shadowheart, which is adorable and on-brand. My beloved Owlbear Cub was there, as was Scratch. Wyll was a real MVP and accompanied Karlach to the Hells and, if I’m remembering correctly, they hinted that a cure for her was on the horizon? Amazing. Lae’zel and Astarion had very nice things to say, which just shows how much they’ve both developed from when I first met them. I got to hug Halsin, Minthara was as sexy and menacing as ever, and Withers was his usual droll self. Overall, I was happy with my ending. And more than happy with the game overall, I should say. I wasn’t sure I’d like it or even stick with it going in, given how inexperienced I was with D&D and these systems. It was a pretty steep learning curve, and I still don’t know that I fully “get” some of the systems, but that took a huge backseat to the game’s incredible world, characters, writing, voice acting, and thirsty, depraved stuff. Especially that. After spending 200 hours with it, I don’t know that I’m rushing into a second playtime anytime soon, but I never got to smooch Minthara or Mizora, so I absolutely have to rectify that at some point. Thanks for the memories, Baldur’s Gate 3. Fuck you, Auntie Ethel.
Despite some minor gripes, I really enjoyed Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. As a huge Star Wars fan, if you hand me a lightsaber and give me a handful of new and familiar locales from a galaxy far, far away, I’m pretty content. Overall, I felt similarly about Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. I have a number of minor complaints that can be summed up as “I think the game needed more polish,” but ultimately, I had a blast. Much of what I liked from the first game made the leap to the sequel, like customizing your lightsaber and clothing, unlocking new powers and abilities, and having a ship/home base where you check in and chat with team members. All of those and more were also expanded in some very cool ways, though. Note there are some definite [SPOILERS] ahead, in both text and images.
For one, I loved the new home base setup. Not only do you have a ship that you call home, you have a whole cantina filled with colorful characters and little things you can do. I am absolutely a sucker for building up a base and filling it with people and activities. I loved it in Suikoden II, The Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, etc., so I was excited to see it here as well. This system, for me, makes my adventures feel more meaningful. I’m not just collecting things to collect them, which can sometimes be pretty dull (I found many of the chests in this game to be a bit more work than they were worth). I’m building something, expanding my community. It makes the world feel more alive, and I appreciate that.
Speaking of the cantina, your first visit triggers a classic saloon showdown with one of the game’s main villains, Rayvis, who is threatening Turgle, a squirmy… space frog? Either way, after extensively exploring the first two planets and leveling up a bit, my intervention into the conflict felt appropriate and gave me that sense of “I’m a badass Jedi” that I really want to feel in these games. It’s hard in Star Wars games when you’ve been fantasizing about doing Jedi flips and slicing off hands left and right to be shackled by video game logic early on and barely able to swing a lightsaber. I feared this first Rayvis confrontation might be too early for my Cal to step up and stand his ground, but no. They let me do the classic “Leave him alone” thing, hand on my belt and ready to beat down one of Rayvis’ lackeys, which I handily did with relish. Yes. Let me be a saber-slingin’, roaming hero.
I say saber-slingin’, but you can actually wield a blaster in this installment as well. I have to admit, the Blaster stance was spoiled for me by a TikTok video, and I wasn’t exactly looking forward to unlocking it. Why would I need a blaster when I could either dual wield sabers or go double-bladed? And then I unlocked it and… okay, yeah, it’s pretty awesome. It sounds goofy and in theory I wouldn’t normally like the idea that my Jedi needed a blaster, but in practice it was so fun and versatile in combat. It allowed me to get in close and unleash flurries of quick strikes, which is my preferred approach, then retreat and get a few shots off while I healed or recharged. The stance I would have thought I’d like was the Crossguard stance, since it’s based on Kylo Ren and he is an absolute beast in combat. Alas, it is so slow and deliberate, and I just wasn’t patient enough to adjust my fast-paced style to really learn it. I do like that you can quickly switch between stances, though, and overall, I love the variety that stances brought to the combat in this entry.
It’s easy for story to take a backseat in a game where you get to be a Jedi, but I was pleasantly surprised by Jedi Survivor’s narrative. The supporting cast was key for me, really. I remember fawning over Nightsister Merrin in Fallen Order, so to see her not only return but play such a major role in the story, gameplay, and Cal’s personal journey was more than welcome. I would absolutely plunk down money for a solo Merrin adventure. BD-1 is as adorable and helpful as ever, and Greez’s wry humor keeps things light when the tale takes some dark turns. Turgle is a welcome addition in terms of humor as well, but maybe my favorite new character is Zee, droid and former aide to a Jedi Master from a time long since passed. Her quaint naiveté in a world so beyond what she was used to is charming and often very funny. I loved her voice and design, and I was easily won over with how eager she was to help our cause and be included in our growing band of misfits. Caij Vanda was also pretty rad, though woefully underused.
As a villain, Dagan was pretty lame. His fall was predictable, and I jeered at every one of his attempts to talk tough and prove his dominance. I easily crushed him in each of our encounters. If he had been the game’s final boss, I’d have been royally let down. Turns out, he’s just a one-armed red herring, which made the reveal of the true villain so effective that I actually shouted “What!?” at my screen when it happened. I followed it up with “I should have known, grumble grumble,” and thought back to all of the times that this character said or did something even somewhat questionable. That made for a good twist, in my opinion. I wasn’t quite as happy with Darth Vader’s appearance. His battle with Cere further established her as a powerful, wise, and capable Jedi, but kind of did the opposite for Vader. I appreciate that it expands his lore, particularly regarding the once-only-casually-mentioned hunt for remaining Jedi after Order 66, but how many times can we see him get his ass kicked before we start to question his power and status? Newer Star Wars media, like Rogue One and Obi-Wan show Vader being a powerful badass like never before, but in games he seems to be a punching bag. He’s had his ass handed to him or been outwitted by Starkiller, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Cal, Cere, and more. Having said that, boy did he kick the ever-loving shit out of me in our fight, lol.
So, yeah, there were several graphical or gameplay things I thought could be smoothed over, and some of the platforming was maddening, but overall Jedi Survivor was another pretty, thrilling, emotional romp through the Star Wars universe. I haven’t even mentioned how good some of the environments looked, but hopefully the screenshots will communicate that well enough. Plus, you can befriend, pet, and ride some very cool and adorable beasties. I’m sure it will miss out on some big accolades in this year crowded with incredible AAA and indie hits, but it’s a great time. I’m just a few trophies short of the platinum, and the only thing that stopped me was the release of another huge game – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
I’m sure I’verantedaboutmyloveforvariousResidentEvilgamesbefore, but I like to start my posts with a bit of personal history. From some of my earliest memories, I was a Nintendo fanboy who also loved horror. I loved my NES, the SNES was the console that made me realize how powerful my love of games was, and I was all in on the Nintendo 64. Simultaneously, I loved slasher films, haunted houses, and, of course, zombies. This made the allure of the original PlayStation console very hard to deny. As a diehard Nintendo fanboy, I’d ridiculed Sony’s entrance into the gaming market. No one could take down Nintendo, I thought. But then I started seeing all these exclusive PlayStation games in Electronic Gaming Monthly and GamePro that I just couldn’t ignore. Final Fantasy VII? Metal Gear Solid? And, yes, Resident Evil. When I finally convinced my parents to buy me a PlayStation (“the games are different! You can’t play these on Nintendo 64, I swear!”), Resident Evil: Director’s Cut was the first game I got.
Thus began my long love affair with the Resident Evil series. Though I owned and loved my PlayStation and PS2, my fanboy heart was still beating for Nintendo, and I was rooting for the GameCube to succeed. When Capcom announced a slew of games exclusive to the little purple console, including Resident Evil 4, I was ecstatic. And when Resident Evil 4 went on to be a ground-breaking game-of-the-year, my heart swelled with nerdy joy. It didn’t bother me that RE4 would go on to be a multiplatform megahit. By then I had pretty much given myself over to the multi-console mindset. Why restrict myself to one console and one set of exclusive games when I could play everything (when I could afford it)? But my love for the Resident Evil series thrived, and in recent years it’s burned even brighter, thanks to incredible remakes and new entries alike.
When the Resident Evil 4 remake was announced, I was surprised by the number of video game content creators and podcasters that legitimately seemed to question the “need” for a remake. I’m tired of remake discourse in general, I think. The “need’ argument rarely, if ever, holds water for me. Whether we’re talking about an original piece of content, a sequel, a remake, whatever, where does “need” come in? What does it mean to need a new piece of entertainment/art? That it’s somehow “vital”? I don’t love that idea. If a video game studio releases a totally new IP, how often do we hear the same people saying “ah, yes, we needed this”? Or, if it’s bad, “we didn’t need this”? It all seems caught up in a years-old distaste for existing IP that goes back decades. This is a personal blog post so I’m not going to dig up the research I’ve read that shows the “we’re running out of ideas” mentality is ancient, but I can’t help but think of it every time gamers bemoan a new remake/remaster just because they’re not interested in it. The remake of Cabin Fever, a horror movie I love, was very bad. It didn’t magically erase the original Cabin Fever movie, just as a “bad” remake of Resident Evil 4 wouldn’t change any of the previous versions of the game, just offer a new iteration for younger gamers who prefer fresher paint and added features.
Lucky for us, the remake of Resident Evil 4 isn’t bad. In fact, like the other recent remakes and mainline entries, it is pretty incredible. Capcom once again does an amazing job at balancing elements that made the original game special with new features, polish, and careful editing. To start with, the game looks great. I’ve blathered at length about how good the RE Engine is at textures, lighting, and more, and this game is another stellar example of that. The engine doesn’t do all the work, though. It’s obvious that a lot of thought and care went into designing every outfit, item, character, and environment. I’ve always loved that you can go into your menu and examine items in Resident Evil games. Not just because you must in order to solve little puzzles or find hidden objects, but it helps me appreciate the time the designers took in crafting these fully rendered, often very pretty objects that have gotten increasingly ornate over the years.
Speaking of beautiful environments, one of my favorite design upgrades in this game is the castle. The castle in the original game was fine in terms of gameplay and basic design, but Capcom has gotten so much better at crafting spaces that feel real, lived in, and are filled with little gorgeous details. As was the case with Castle Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village, I found myself wanting to own and live in this castle. Yes, it’s filled with blood fountains and mutant insect nests and a rickety-at-best series of underground mineshafts, but that just adds some lived-in charm! Who doesn’t want a library filled with not only books but also violent, aggressive suits of armor? I rest my case. If I suddenly became a multi-billionaire, I swear to you I would buck the current trend of being a massive, maniacal asshole and I would give so much money to the fight against climate change and ending world hunger and unseating tyrannical politicians… AFTER I build an exact replica of every mansion, house, and castle from the Resident Evil series. I just happened to have some screenshots of the remaster of the original Resident Evil 4 on my PS5, so I’ll throw in a couple for comparison.
If we’re talking about glow-ups, however, we can’t pass over one of the biggest makeovers in Resident Evil history: Ms. Ashley Graham. I’m not exaggerating when I say I love the new Ashley. To be fair, I wasn’t much of a hater of the original Ashley. I didn’t love her, and her sometimes incessant shouts of “Leooooon!” were grating, but I really didn’t get the hate about her as a companion. Had people played with other AI follower characters in video games? They were notoriously terrible and legitimately dumb, so to have an AI follower that was smart enough to duck and stay out of the way of my gunfire was amazing to me at the time. The new Ashley, like the new Resident Evil 4, is smarter, prettier, and much deeper.
Okay, maybe “much deeper” is slightly hyperbolic, but I give Ashley 2.0 a lot of credit. I know some people are disappointed that she’s still a damsel, but her kidnapping and rescue is central to the RE4 story, and she’s the president’s daughter, not a rookie cop or special agent. I think Capcom was aware of the image of a flailing, desperate Ashley and made strides in making her tougher and more of a partner rather than a parcel to be carried and protected. She helps me solve puzzles, calls out danger, and even becomes a “master of unlocking” (an Easter Egg that thoroughly charmed me). When you first meet her, she swings a heavy candle holder at your head. And when you flee the church to make your way back to the village, she says “can we take a break?” When Leon says “Sorry, we have to keep moving,” Ashley doesn’t whine or play for sympathy. She simply says “okay,” and that’s the last time she comments about being tired or living through an absolute hellscape. She’s not popping zombie heads or punching boulders, okay, but she’s far braver and stronger than Ashley 1.0.
Part of Ashley’s glow-up is also a, well, glow-up. “Really, Joey? A third paragraph about Ashley? This game is called Resident Evil 4, not Ashley Graham Magical Dress-up Time.” Okay, imaginary reader who represents a small component of my writerly anxiety, but maybe it should be called that, because the new Ashley is, in my eyes, a hottie-boom-body, as the kids say. Or they did. Once upon a time. Maybe. It probably doesn’t hurt that, as with my beloved Lady Dimitrescu, Capcom used a real model for Ashley’s face. Speaking of Lady D, pairing her with Ashley is a fair representation of my broad “taste” in women, virtual or otherwise. Smart, mousey, kind, outgoing? Yes. Tall, assertive, sexy, aggressively murderous? Also yes. Capcom knew what they were doing when they dressed Ashley like Velma from Scooby Doo and gave me nerdy-but-fashionable glasses for her to wear. And have you seen the absolute deluge of Leon smut out there? The in-depth analysis of his biceps and hair? I will not apologize for my newfound Ashley obsession. Insert emoji with the scrunchy little angry face.
Okay, phew, I may have gotten a little defensive there. Let’s settle down, take a breath, and talk about grumpy, one-eyed, spider-spined monkey dudes. Well, him and the rest of the cast of villains. While the arguably silly plot remains (and what would a Resident Evil game be without it), as does a small slice of the camp from the original, the new iterations of Mendez, Krauser, Salazar, and Saddler are more menacing and (to some extent) believable. Salazar in particular maintains his stature and vamping but feels a lot more realistic and at-home in this new world. It feels like some kind of small (eh? see what I did there?) miracle that Capcom managed to keep Resident Evil 4’s silliness but somehow make a slightly more grounded, believable reality. Yes, you’re unrealistically dodging massive chunks of rock on a jet ski and fighting gigantic, twisted tangles of flesh and eyeballs, but all the Resident Evil remakes feel interconnected and adequately less cheesy to me, and I have to think it’s in large part due to their refined villains.
Leon and Luis are also slightly toned down in terms of their quips, but I appreciate their slightly antagonistic bromance in the remake. Luis’s role hasn’t expanded all that much, but I feel like small tweaks to his backstory (like the photo of him on a certain research team) and dialog about him (between Leon and Ashley after his death) make him feel more vital to the story. Leon maintains his golden retriever aloofness, particularly when it comes to Ashley’s subtle advances. I was so tickled when they started flirting in Chapter 9, when Ashley asks him if he does a lot of missions like this and he responds with the classic “well, yeah… but I’m not used to having such good company.” And, later, when Leon balks at Ashley’s suggestion that he wear a suit of armor, she says “too bad. I think you’d look pretty dashing.” Come on, man. Chemistry for days between these two! Except Leon later just has to drop the ball when Ashley suggests she could pull some strings and get him assigned to her security detail. Leon. My man. Get it together.
I should wrap things up, but I’ll rapid-fire some other things I loved. The controls, as with the recent third person RE games, are tight and responsive. The egg bit (using eggs as weapons against bosses) is a cute, silly Easter… well, you know. I am so happy they kept the Merchant mostly the same but expanded his lines. He is so sassy in this. The way he says, “See anything you like, Strange-uh?” gets me every time. The shooting gallery is seriously well-done. The unique design, sounds, commentary, gameplay… all great. I love the inclusion of classic character models for the briefcase charms (though why not let us use them in-game, like the Resident Evil 2 remake did?). Sound design is immaculate. All of my heart to the return of the white wolf.
I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but the last thing I’ll say is that I love the costumes and wish there were more of them. With them, I was able to take one of my favorite screenshots of all time. Look at these two. It looks like an old-timey Hollywood paparazzi photo where a famous celebrity couple are caught coming out of a diner. Leon coolly looking away, Ashley stunned by the crowd of flashbulbs. I love it.
And I love Resident Evil 4. Capcom has blown me away with how frequently they’re releasing just killer Resident Evil games. A bounty of riches. Having one team work on new entries and another work on remakes is genius, and it feels like a new RE game is always just around the corner. If the pattern holds, we should hear about Resident Evil 9 next, along with maybe a tease for the next remake? I can’t wait.
*blows dust off imaginary typewriter* Hello again, old friend. Friends? I don’t know who I write these to, in reality. I maintain that this blog is a way for me to chronicle my history with video games mostly for myself, but I am aware that an occasional stranger or friend might pop in and read these overly long and rambling posts. So, to you, hello. It has been a while.
A lot has happened since I last wrote, not least of which is landing a dream job with PlayStation. It couldn’t have come at a better time, too. Last summer I was mid-crisis, anxious about finishing my degree and what came next. I got a call about a copywriting position I’d applied for just two weeks prior. I’d also applied for a game testing position, sure I’d never qualify for the writing position since it was far from entry level. When I got the call, I was certain it was for the testing job. Nope. I felt incredibly lucky and honored to even get a pre-interview call, and with each subsequent round of interviews I told myself that I was just really fortunate to have gotten that far. When I got the job offer, I lost it. I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. Maybe I’ll write about it in more detail later but suffice to say it was quite a ride.
This post, as others in the past have, will focus on catching up on games I’ve played recently. Well, if eight months can be called “recent,” I guess. To manage the length (somewhat), I’ll abstain from saying much about games I’ve revisited. Animal Crossing New Horizons is currently pulling me back in, I replayed Ace Combat 7 to chip away at the platinum for that, I played Everybody’s Golf with friends until the second the servers were taken offline (RIP), and I still pop into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Party Superstars, and Phasmophobia on the regular. I also threw several dozen more hours into No Man’s Sky at one point. But let’s talk about newer experiences.
Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers
I’ve gushed about my time with the first Arcade Spirits game, so The New Challengers was one of my most anticipated games of 2022. The colorful art style and character design, the clever writing, the retro game scene vibe — I loved it all, and the sequel fine-tuned much of what I liked about its predecessor. I really liked the original cast of characters so my main concern going into the sequel was that I might not connect with the new crew as well.
Turns out, the team at Fiction Factory Games knows what they’re doing, and I loved the new cast as much as the old. I also really liked the competitive tournament storyline and the many choices you can make about your approach to the matches and Iris, besides the obvious relationship stuff. Speaking of, the first game touched on some interesting gender and sexuality things, and the sequel adds even more, including the ability to be in a poly relationship. I’m sure it’s not the first indie game to allow it, but it still felt pretty refreshing. And I took advantage of it, because it just so happened to involve my two top relationship choices: Grace and Jynx. Best of both worlds, babyyyyy. I do still wish there were character animations and even more customizable player character models, but maybe that will come in future installments – of which I hope there are many.
The Quarry
I’ve written about my love for Until Dawn and my mixed (but mostly positive) feelings for the Dark Pictures Anthology games, so The Quarry was one of the games I was very excited for in 2022. One thing that turned me off about some of the Dark Pictures games was the settings. While I appreciate the desire to let players experience several different horrific scenarios in several different settings, like a ghost ship or an ancient cave system, there’s something about the classic bunch-of-teens-in-the-woods scenario that scratches the classic slasher itch for me. The Quarry scratched that itch even more than Until Dawn, and while the latter is still my favorite in the series, I had a ton of fun with former.
I’ll avoid story spoilers here, but the story was indeed a highlight in this entry. Having good characters is a must for ensemble horror, and I haven’t liked a cast in the series this much since Until Dawn. There has been a likable character or two in each game, but I thought this whole lineup was strong. Ted Raimi was great as Sherriff Hackett, Siobhan Williams played a great final girl (sort of?), frickin’ Lance Henriksen? Ariel Winter? Great cast. My favorite character was Kaitlyn, played by Brenda Song, though. Not only was she “a baddie,” as the kids say, she was the kind of character that you’d actually want with you in a situation like that. Smart, strong-willed, and (almost) unflinching.
Good writing goes a long way in making a good story and good characters, though, and I thought the dialog writing in particular was much stronger in this game. There was an occasional cheeseball line or cringey joke, but those are part of the horror experience, too. For the most part, I thought the characters sounded believable and natural. The graphics were also, as always, excellent. I love the realistic horror movie look, plus with forced camera angles, moody lighting, and great animation, these games still feel like the closest thing we can get to a playable horror movie. I haven’t gotten the platinum trophy yet, but I can see myself going back and cleaning that up at some point. Supermassive Games puts these games out at a decent clip, too, so I hope I won’t have to wait very long for the next one.
Resident Evil Village: Winters’ Expansion
I can’t get enough of Resident Evil Village. Well, I can’t get enough of the Resident Evil series in general, which is why I’m super stoked for Resident Evil 4 Remake later this month. But Village holds a special place in my RE-heart, and not just because of the beautiful Lady Dimitrescu. Okay, so largely because of the beautiful Lady Dimitrescu. Get it? Largely? Because she’s very big? Ahem. No, I love a lot of what Village brought to the series. The graphics and design were stunning, the balance of eerie exploration and tense action was on point, and I was invested in the Winters family’s tragic tale.
The Winters’ Expansion is woefully lacking in vitamin D (as in the Lady), but it does continue Rose’s story right from the end of the main game. It’s a short experience but there are some very cool, scary scenes. Light content spoilers ahead, though I’ll avoid story stuff. You return to House Beneviento and are once again stripped of any weapons and required to sneak your way out, solving puzzles along the way. I loved that part of the main game, so I was very happy to see another level like it. The mannequins were very creepy, to the point where I sent a short video to a friend and they wrote back “oh hell no.” As a matter of fact, oh hell yes. I haven’t yet gone through the game in third person mode, but I do like that they’ve added that option for people who prefer that perspective over first. It was a short addition to the Village story but it was as beautiful and spooky as the main game, so I had a good time with it.
Stray
Stray blew up in a way that few could have gue… oh, who am I kidding? As soon as the trailer for this game was released, I think the combination of adorable cat and atmospheric robot city convinced me and many others that this was a sure hit. And that it was, deservedly so. It’s a fairly simple and straightforward game, with just a handful of puzzles and combat scenarios, but it’s incredibly charming and emotionally engaging. I mean, come on. It’s a cat. As a cat owner myself (hi, Bella! She can’t read this. She’s a cat. But I will read it out loud to her at some point), I was instantly invested in this little feline’s fate.
Slight spoilers for the beginning of the game, but right in the very first scene you’re already heartbroken. If you’re me (and at least one of my friends), your eyes are actually welled with tears by the scene that sets the adventure into motion. There are other moving moments as well, but overall this was just a sweet, lovely experience for me. Combat and running from enemies was tense, but later I could find a cozy shelf in a library bathed in soft lighting, curl up on a pillow, and go to sleep. And I could sleep for as long as I wanted. There’s even a trophy for sleeping a certain amount of time! And it’s that kind of thing that made me really appreciate this game. They got the cat-ness right. Rubbing up against robot legs, knocking things off shelves, scratching rugs and couches when I can… It’s not an intensely realistic cat sim, but it balances the right kitty notes with a world I wanted to explore and a story that engaged me. I really liked it.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare II
I hadn’t played a CoD in a while (since… the first Ghosts?), and Modern Warfare II seemed to be getting some buzz, so I decided to give the campaign a try. I finished it, and it retains much of what I liked about previous campaigns, though there were a couple of small annoyances. While I understand the desire to produce highly scripted action set pieces, and sometimes they work well, sometimes it just felt like I was set up to fail. I feel most immersed and a part of the action when everything seems inevitable and natural. When it’s obvious that a guy is scripted to kick in a door and blast me with a shotgun as soon as I step past an invisible line, I feel more like I’m an actor in a movie, hitting my mark. Yes, I understand that these kind of invisible triggers are in most games, but in MWII sometimes they result in immediate death. It was like the developers were trying to get across the point that war is hard and death is around every corner. Which, yes, duh. But you also want me to feel like a badass who’s taking out entire squads almost single handedly, so… these two things didn’t mesh for me. I am fine with challenging games when my deaths feel like my fault. I scold myself and try again. When I feel like the game is working against me and my deaths are the result of careful scripting, I feel far less engaged and more aware of the “gaminess” of it all.
Also, please, video game developers, I’m begging you to do some research on Lake Michigan before trying to depict the Chicago lakefront. This is not the first game where you can see lights across the lake from the city, but this might be the biggest budget one with the most people working on it. You’re telling me no one involved has been to Chicago or even looked at pictures of the lake from the city? Lake Michigan is massive. By surface area, it’s bigger than nine of the US states. It’s bigger than entire countries, like the Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, Switzerland, and Taiwan (not combined). I understand that people see “lake” and think of, like, a lake where they might go kayaking with their family on vacation but… no. Please. Justice for Lake Michigan.
Seriously, what are those lights over the water? Get outta here.
Anyway, those gripes aside, I had a pretty good time with MWII. It looks amazing, as they often do, and the gunplay and movement feel as fluid as ever. One of my favorite things about the series is the variety when it comes to mission types. I can see how it might get old if you play every single entry, but I like breaching a desert facility with a squad, then firing on several escaping enemies from an airship above, then sneakily infiltrating an area solo, then crawling through muck to snipe a compound. I could probably have done without the vehicle hopping mission, but you can’t win ‘em all sometimes. Overall, it was a fun time.
Disco Elysium
I’ll keep this relatively short because Disco Elysium is a dense game with a lot to unpack. If you are a big fan of the game or just want to hear more, we recorded two episodes discussing it on our Pretty Pixels Podcast (which is now on potentially permanent hiatus, RIP), which you can find here and here. To sum it up, I really warmed to this game over the many hours I spent with it. It was a gradual climb that ended with me loving it. My first hour with the game felt slow and confusing. The second was slightly clearer, but I found myself wondering if this game was being obtuse just to seem complicated or nuanced. With each subsequent hour, my cynicism melted away and I could see purpose behind the design choices the developers made. The amnesia, the inner voices without context, the impact of player choice… like Harry’s memory, slowly things started to come into focus.
In the end, Disco Elysium tells a complex but beautiful (if tragic) story that is not just Harry’s. It’s yours. It’s Kim’s. It’s Elysium’s. It was a ride. I was surprised, I was moved, I was provoked to really consider things like government, identity, systems of power. I started my journey in a detached and cynical way, but ended up getting misty-eyed on several occasions, none of which I want to spoil. So, like other narratively rich games, I mostly have to just urge you to play it and experience it for yourself. It might seem confusing and, depending on your tastes, overly “artsy” at first, but if you stick with it I have a feeling you’ll get a lot out of it, as I did.
Gotham Knights
Poor Gotham Knights. Gamers on social media love a punching bag, and Gotham Knights really took a beating when it came out. As is often the case, it does seem that after the launch ire dies down, people start discovering it and there is an adjustment in public sentiment when people start realizing that it’s not nearly as bad as reactionary hot-take-baiters seemed to make it out to be. I played it alone and with a friend, and while I do agree with some of the valid criticisms of it (primarily that the city isn’t as filled with the kind of rich detail and love that we’ve come to expect), I had a good time and thought it was a solid Batman story.
Yes, the city design is uninspired, but I thought the characters looked great and I was frequently snapping screenshots of Batgirl (the only character I played as) kicking ass and gliding over rooftops. The opening cinematic was rad, as was the ending sequence. One of my favorite things about the game was the costumes, though. I don’t know if this is controversial to say, but the costumes are one of the few things this game does better than the Arkham games (though I do feel it’s unfair to the devs to keep making that comparison). Batgirl alone has the awesome Knight Ops, Eternal, Beyond, and Talon suits.
Online co-op was very fun, though when my friend and I got too far from each other, we did experience some slowdown. I also do wish that the cycle travel was faster, as it felt like I was dutifully obeying local speed limits rather than zipping dangerously through the dark streets of Gotham. Still, overall, I had a really good time with Gotham Knights and am always down for more Batman games where we get substantial story beats involving Bat Family characters we don’t see in games as often. On a last note, I would bet a very pretty penny that Harley Quinn’s appearance was based on Bridget Fonda. Seriously.
Thronebreaker
That same friend I played Gotham Knights with, Paul (hi, Paul!), had been recommending Thronebreaker to me (and every one of our podcast listeners at the end of every episode) for months, so we did a game swap. He is a huge Star Wars and Mass Effect fan, so I was absolutely shocked and appalled that he hadn’t played Knights of the Old Republic yet. That game played a critical role in deepening my love of Star Wars, plus it was the launch of my love of Bioware-style RPGs that have moral alignments, choices, romance options, and all that good stuff. What I am not typically a fan of is, uh… card games. Thronebreaker, dear reader, is a card game. But I do love The Witcher 3, so in the spirit of the swap, and to keep an open mind, I downloaded Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and started my deck-based journey.
Right off the bat, I loved the art style. The thick comic lines, minor details, and subtle animations really made the maps, characters, and cards very pleasing to look at. Especially Queen Meve. Because she real purty. Ahem, where was I? Speaking of Meve, though, I very quickly became invested in the story. Again, no big story spoilers, but the plot involves Queen Meve being dethroned and her fight to win back her Queendom. The enemies are particularly well written, which is so important in revenge/vengeance stories because my drive to kill them painfully grows with each new slight or injustice they deliver. And my bloodlust was ready to burst once I got near the endgame. Okay, wait, I guess I should slow down and talk about the actual card battles. As I played the tutorial, and the game introduced rule after rule, and I could see how deep you could get into deck building and strategy. I could feel my brain going numb. I fumbled my way through the first few real battles before deciding to just use a guide for any battles I struggled with.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t many! I fought every battle I could for practice, and eventually I started to catch onto some of the patterns the game uses. An enemy would start laying down certain cards and I would think “ah, they’re trying to set me up for this. Well then I’ll do this.” So, yes, I did need help on occasion, but it didn’t diminish my experience. Every victory felt hard fought and my ultimate victory was very sweet. I didn’t get the best ending, because I made what I didn’t realize at the time was a bad decision, but my ending was pretty solid. Overall, I ended up having a ton of fun with Thronebreaker. And Meve can get it.
Dying Light 2
Oh, Dying Light 2. I really wanted to love you. I really do appreciate all of the work that goes into games, especially games with as many moving parts as Dying Light 2. And there are things I enjoyed in my time with the game. The gameplay loop, which is a big part of the experience, hooked me. Like the first game, I enjoyed doing runs, scoping out new places to raid, dodging zombies, levelling up, all that good stuff. And some of the early story beats, like liberating the first utility tower, made me excited about the narrative and my role in it. If you’d asked me when I was around a quarter of the way through the game what I would score it, I’d have said around an 8, maybe an 8.5. Unfortunately, that number steadily dropped as the game carried on.
Granted, some of my biggest gripes are with the last quarter of the game, which drags on at an uneven pace, making me wish at every turn that it would just end and leave me with my still mostly positive memories. But end it did not, and the final stretch had several sections that just slowed it down even more, like an infuriating and pointless duct crawling section and a terrible final boss. I got the “good” ending, but by the time I got it I just didn’t really care anymore. I was so annoyed by the last bit of the game. If I were just looking for an open world zombie game to pass the time with missions and side quests and such, I might have had a perfectly fine time. The story kind of ruined it for me.
Unpacking
I like to fit small indie games between bigger, AAA affairs, and Unpacking seemed like the perfect kind of low-stakes, chill, cozy experience to follow Dying Light 2 with. It was everything I’d hoped it would be. It was charming, the retro pixel art was adorable, the soundtrack was pretty bangin’, and the narrative was subtle, sad, sweet, and more. It’s a simple premise, obviously: click on a box to produce an object, find a place for it in a room (or rooms), and click on where you want it to go. You can turn things, move them around, or just lazily toss things where you like. Some things have a very specific location, and I did find myself a little frustrated when I couldn’t figure out where that spot was, but overall the game was pretty free and loose with where I could drop things.
Yet again, no major story spoilers, but I really loved the way the narrative unfolded in this game. Each room, each object, reveal new wrinkles in the story. You find yourself feeling like you really know this character you’re playing as, just by considering the kinds of items you’re handling and the space you’re unpacking them in. Each room contains clues, and this environmental storytelling felt new and rewarding. But my story might not be yours, or even “the” story. A friend of mine played and mentioned how sad it was that the player character [redacted]. But when I played, I didn’t read it that way at all. It’s not that either of us has to be “right” – we just experienced a different version of the same story. Which is pretty cool, I think. So, yeah, I loved Unpacking. While it is pleasant and charming, to call it a “palate cleanser,” as I was about to, is unfair to it, even if that’s how I used it. It’s a wonderful game in its own right.
FAR: Changing Tides
FAR: Changing Tides was another quiet, lovely game. Whereas Unpacking kept text to a minimum, FAR excludes it entirely. For a game about tending your ship, sailing the seas, and exploring the depths, the lack of narration or exposition felt appropriate. The sailing mechanics are simple and rewarding. You push in a heavy switch to raise your mast, carry down a cable to open the sail, and move the sail with a handle to control speed. You can stop quickly by releasing the handle and loosing the cable. These are the opening sailing controls, and I would have been happy enough with even just this simple setup. Slight progression spoiler, but as you get further you unlock a steam engine, then even more upgrades later. With the steam engine, you use trash you’ve collected from the seafloor or ruins as fuel, and must then balance the previously mentioned controls with occasionally feeding the engine and putting out any fires that might occur if you push it too far.
Things didn’t always go smoothly, of course, and dealing with storms, obstructions, and other barriers meant I had to always be on my toes in case I had to jump into action and halt the engine, drop the sail, and stop on a dime. This made travel itself a perpetual puzzle, but to unlock upgrades or a path forward, I also had to explore buildings, ruins, and more, solving pretty straightforward physics puzzles along the way. While these weren’t as fun as sailing, they were still rewarding, especially because I then got to scurry back to my ship, my home, my heart. The sometimes-smooth, sometimes-manic process of driving my ship was endlessly soothing. It made me wish for a fully 3D, open-world version, where I could literally just sail around and explore strange new places.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
Man, what a blast of pure nostalgia. Shredder’s Revenge has learned the valuable lesson of recent excellent remakes and remasters, like the Resident Evil games and Metroid Prime Remastered in that it maintains the essence of the thing you once loved and polishes it with modern flair. In my fuzziest, most nostalgic memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the arcade game, it plays like a dream. When I revisited it a while back, I was reminded of the reality, which is that it is an arcade game designed to snarf up as many of your quarters as possible. It was purposefully unbalanced and, at times, unfair. We can’t have you just breezing through it on a few measly quarters, can we? Luckily, I played it in The Galloping Ghost Arcade, in Brookfield, Illinois, where you pay an entry fee and can then play as much of any game that you want. Infinite continues meant I could finally beat the TMNT arcade game that I never fully beat as a kid (though I did make it to Shredder a few times).
Shredder’s Revenge takes the fuzzy part of my memories with that classic arcade game and delivers them back to me in a beautiful retro package. The sprite work and animation are bright and beautiful, the soundtrack is bangin’, and the game plays like a cleaner version of what I remember the arcade game playing like with some added special moves unique to each character. It was a pretty short game, yes, but I was able to play the whole thing with a few of friends and had a lot of fun doing it. If I’d just played it solo it would have still been a good time, but there is something extra fun about picking heroes, helping each other, and experiencing something new with friends.
Twelve Minutes
Twelve Minutes, like Gotham Knights, was a bit of a victim of gamer ire on social media when it came out. I can understand why, given the level of Hollywood talent involved, the hype preceding release, and the admittedly awful narrative twist. Removed from the drama, though, I thought it was a pretty decent adventure game that reminded me of the simple joy of a point-and-click-style narrative mystery. Like those games, you investigate objects and points of interest, and, with the power of inductive reasoning, piece together a story. There were a couple of pieces that were a little frustrating to fit together, but overall it was a pretty satisfying loop. Get it? Loop? Like… a time loop? Never mind. Yeah, the twist was very dumb, and the voice acting was a bit of a mixed bag, but it was a short and ultimately decent experience.
Metroid Prime Remastered
Metroid Prime was one of the oldest games on my backlog. I loved my GameCube and was desperate for new, exciting releases after launch. At the time, Super Metroid was on a ton of “best games of all time” lists. I felt like I’d missed out by not playing it, so when Metroid Prime came around I was determined to not miss out. Unfortunately, a couple of things were conspiring against me. First, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released just a couple of weeks prior to Metroid Prime, and I wasn’t ready to move on from its sunny, retro, neon-washed streets. I shipped out for basic military training two months later, so a lot of that time was spent with friends, saying my goodbyes. I wouldn’t get my GameCube shipped to me until I was in technical training, more than three months later. I tried to start Prime while I was in training, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Too many distractions. Like its predecessor, it was held up as one of the best games of all time.
The years went by, sequels were released, and I just never got around to playing it. Then Metroid Dread came along, and I decided to play Super Metroid to prepare for the release of the much-hyped Dread. And I’m glad I did, because I fell in love with it. And Dread. And Samus Returns. And Fusion. Yes, I was a total Metroid convert. I had seen the green visor-tinted light. So when Metroid Prime Remastered was announced and shadow dropped, I snapped it up right away. As the other entries in the series are, it is truly an incredible game, and an amazing remaster. As others have pointed out, it doesn’t seem like a simple up-res. It sure seems like the graphics were completely replaced with new assets. Everything looks crisp and beautiful, and it runs as smooth as Chozo butter… if there is such a thing.
Much of what I loved about Metroid Prime is what I love about the series in general. It’s atmospheric, moody, challenging, and Samus Aran is a certified badass. Every time I got stuck with a puzzle, or struggled with a boss, I worried it was going to be a massive road block that would frustrate me and cause me to walk away. But apparently Retro and Nintendo know how to make video games, because the answer to my troubles were always within grasp. With a little patience and the willingness to approach things from a different angle, I was always able to overcome challenges. Ridley was a classic Metroid boss fight. My first attempt, he demolished me. How could I beat him? Should I look up a guide? After my second try, he still beat me, but I could see his patterns. I crushed him on the third try. I love Metroid Prime Remastered and I really hope they give the same treatment to Prime 2 and 3. Also, that Phazon Suit? Sexyyyyyy.
PowerWash Simulator
My time with PowerWash Simulator was brief but intense. I don’t know what it says about my brain, but pressure washing dirt and scum from every kind of surface, building, vehicle, and structure was supremely satisfying. I don’t really even know what to say about this game that’s not obvious. You have a pressure washer with several attachments that control the strength and size of your jet, and you use it to clean vehicles, buildings, carnival rides, ancient ruins, and more. The game is forgiving in the sense that you don’t need to blast away every single molecule of dirt on a segment of whatever you’re washing. If you get around 97%, it’ll auto-complete for you, which takes away a lot of the pressure (badum-csh) that you might get stuck because you can’t find what tiny patch you’re missing.
I played this game obsessively over the course of a couple of weeks, sometimes listening to podcasts while I worked. It felt oddly productive. Like, obviously I’m playing a game, but after I completed a particularly big, complicated job, I felt seriously accomplished. The very loose and silly story was charming, and there were a couple of very fun surprises throughout. I put the game aside after I finished the campaign, but I’ll definitely be picking it back up at some point to run through the Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII content, and I hope Square keeps adding more levels from their IP catalog. Chrono Trigger sets, anyone?
God of War Ragnarök
God of War Ragnarök will always hold a special place in my heart because it’s the first first-party game we shipped during my time with PlayStation. I didn’t write for the game itself, just some support stuff, but seeing one of my fellow copywriter’s name in the credits was so exciting. And what a first game to be even loosely associated with. I loved God of War 2018, and I think Ragnarök surpassed it in every way. While it is a cross-gen game and doesn’t take full advantage of the PS5 hardware, it’s still gorgeous. Its beauty isn’t just about the fidelity of its graphics, though. It has exceptional character and level design, with obvious care and thought put into the smallest of details. A word of caution: visual spoilers in the pictures below.
The story and writing were also top-notch. I really don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that they put a lot of work into each and every major character. Every line lands, and there are some really moving and breathtaking scenes. An excursion with Brock to retrieve a weapon (he said vaguely) was probably my favorite. A favorite side quest involved a couple of beautiful, glowing jellyfish-like creatures. I also love how they developed relationships between characters. Again, it’s hard to say much without spoiling anything, but the way that Kratos and Atreus’s storyline wraps up was better than I could have guessed. I’m so excited to see what the future holds for these characters.
The combat, new and old, was awesome, and [slight combat spoiler, if you haven’t already heard] I absolutely loved the spear combat. I liked the axe and blade combat from the first game a lot and, admittedly, I questioned whether a new weapon could match the simple yet rich potential of those two. It did – so much so that it quickly became my primary weapon. I also, once again, enjoyed the added complexity of using Atreus in combat to stun, distract, or damage enemies. Some random notes: the first fight with Thor was amazing. I love Fenrir. So much. I was excited to see Deborah Ann Woll, because I like her a lot. Freya is a baddie and can get it. Sif is a baddie who can get it. Sexy Valkyries are back, babyyyyyy. And the game was surprisingly funny, even more so than its predecessor. I have many more thoughts, but it’s hard to dive too deep without giving anything away. Suffice to say, I loved my time with God of War Ragnarök and it deserves all the praise it’s gotten.
Need for Speed Unbound
I wouldn’t call myself “a racing game person.” I don’t buy every big racing game, I don’t have a racing wheel, and I can be really picky when it comes to sim vs arcade racers. And yet some of my favorite games of all time are racing games. I’ve spent countless hours chucking shells in the Mario Kart games, I nearly hundred percented the first two Midnight Club games, loved knocking heads in Road Rash, and Burnout Paradise was one of my favorite games of all time. It’s been a while since I’ve played a great arcade racer, and since Need for Speed Unbound was getting some hype, I decided to check it out. I was worried that it might be another Forza Horizon experience, though, where people say it’s arcade-y but it ends up being more realistic. As is often the case, I worried for nothing. Before I knew it, I was sliding around corners, breaking dramatically through billboards, and taking down competitors with style.
It made me realize that one of the very specific things I look for in a racing game is controllable power slides. If I can’t slide recklessly around a curve, recover, and get right back in the race? Not for me. NFS Unbound definitely requires skill and focus, but it controls loosely enough to make races feel just the right amount of ridiculous. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I had played many, many hours before having a sudden realization: this game reminds me of Burnout Paradise! From the basic design of the open world, to starting events, to breaking billboards, it’s all so similar. Weirdly enough, it was a very subtle thing that made it click: the way the camera swings around behind your car after completing an event. I was amazed… and then I looked it up and, uh, yeah, it’s the same developers. So… duh.
I also got very into making a rad wrap for my cars. When I first looked at the customization options, I wasn’t feeling it. I thought “eh, I don’t want to ruin my perfectly beautiful paint job.” I kept scrolling through the decals. “Oh, well… that one is pretty cool. Maybe just one decal.” Scrolled more. “Ooh, dang. Alright, maybe just two.” Two hours later and my car was completely wrapped. Tweaking my design and unlocking new decals via street art was fun. Tweaking my car’s performance and unlocking new parts was also very rewarding. My only real complaint is that the difficulty is not balanced very well. Between impossibly fast AI who will zoom past you with inferior cars to cops that conveniently t-bone you out of nowhere, it really felt like the game was working against me in unfair ways at times. In the end, though, I had an excellent time with Unbound. Even after finishing the campaign, I couldn’t get enough and drove around grabbing collectibles, cleaning up optional events, and popping a few final trophies.
PS VR2
I loved my PS VR, so I was thrilled when a follow-up was announced, especially because the specs for it were so impressive. I always said I would take power over portability, so I didn’t mind the fact that it would be wired, since that just meant it wouldn’t be hampered by mobile processors and would take advantage of the PS5 hardware. Well, I got one at launch and it’s fully lived up to my expectations so. Granted, I haven’t had it for long, but it has everything I wanted in a new VR unit: 4K (2K per eye) OLED displays, better tracking, headset see-through, controllers designed for VR, and it even has a couple of features I didn’t know I wanted (haptic headset feedback and eye tracking). It’s not the Ready Player One leap that VR skeptics seem to be waiting for, but it smooths out many of the last-gen rough edges and I’m just hyped for the library to grow. I do wish there was a media player on PS5 that supported VR, but maybe that’ll come later.
In terms of games, I bought a handful but haven’t played all of them yet. I got Before Your Eyes, Gran Turismo 7 upgrade, and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, which I haven’t played yet. I played through the campaign for Tetris EffectConnected, but there’s not much to update there since I also played the original. Same with the few rounds of Pistol Whip that I tried. I played through the tutorial for Resident Evil Village VR, and while the game looks beautiful and the gunplay is surprisingly fun, it’s also the only game I’ve played so far that’s made me feel a little of the ol’ familiar VR sickness. I did play through the opening levels of What the Bat?, which were pretty fun.
Horizon Call of the Mountain
Again, I haven’t beat this game yet, but I’m a couple hours in and it’s great so far. It’s beautiful, the climbing is intuitive, the bow combat is precise and fun, and there are several fun little VR activities (like painting) to show off the medium’s potential. I love the Horizon games, so while I’ve been disappointed with the relative lack of Aloy, I am happy to just have an opportunity to explore the vibrant, colorful world. I’ll do a more thorough VR game post at some point, but for now I have to take another multi-month blog writing break. Just kidding! I think. I hope. No, seriously.
My history with FromSoftware games is virtually non-existent. I own a copy of Bloodborne that a friend gave to me, and I bought the Demon’s Souls remake for PS5, but I have yet to play either. My exposure to their games comes in the form of the persistent discussion about their difficulty and accessibility with the release of each new game. You know how it goes. A new FromSoft game comes out, hardcore fans get excited and hype rises, curious newcomers enter the fray and decide to check it out, some of them are in love and some of them dare to criticize the inflexible difficulty and lack of accessibility options, a certain contingent of toxic FromSoft fans attack any and all critics, shouting “git gud,” “this game isn’t made for you,” “accessibility options would ruin the game,” all that fun stuff, rinse and repeat. Though I hadn’t played them, I found myself on the side of those calling for more accessibility. I was irked by two main things: for one, accessibility options don’t have to “ruin” a game because they are, as their name implies, options. Adding optional modes for people with disabilities or people who lack the time, patience, or skill to navigate an infamously challenging game doesn’t mean longtime fans can’t play the game how they want to play it. Just because the options are there doesn’t mean you have to use them. The second thing (other than the obvious annoyance at the ridiculousness of the “git gud” refrain) is the lack of willingness by critics to hold the game’s difficulty against it. We seem more than willing to hold a game’s difficulty against it when it’s “too easy,” but there seems to be a hesitation to do the same for inordinately hard games. Read or listen to criticism of games like Kirby, or Luigi’s Mansion, or Super Princess Peach, and you’ll often see scores purposely lowered because the games are “too easy” and don’t present much of a challenge. It’s not a criticism of the design of the game, just the perceived lack of difficulty. I struggle to think of an example of a critic taking significant points off for games that are “too challenging.” Even when a game like Returnal is so challenging that some reviewers can’t finish their review copies in time for embargo, the critical response is mostly unphased. So, to see so many lament that each FromSoft game was difficult, maybe too difficult, yet on the whole be unwilling to hold that difficulty against them was somewhat frustrating.
So, maybe it’s obvious, but I wasn’t all that hyped for Elden Ring when it was announced. The first trailer didn’t look great either, so I had no intention of playing it, at least not until I tried that copy of Demon’s Souls that I have. Just because the discourse around the game frustrated me didn’t mean I was unwilling to try these games. Aside from the toxic fanboys/defenders, I’ve heard great things about them, so I had every intention of playing my copy of Demon’s Souls… eventually. Then Elden Ring was released to even greater fanfare and praise than other Souls games, and my good friend Paul (who has great taste in games) was very hyped for it. Maybe I should start with this game and not Demon’s Souls, I told myself, and decided that I’d pick it up if I just so happened to see it on sale – which I did, in late March. I was, of course, somewhat excited to try it, because it did look pretty cool in the TikTok and Twitter clips I’d seen, but most of those clips highlighted the unrelenting, seemingly imbalanced difficulty I’d heard so much about, so my excitement was buffered by the expectation that this game might not be for me. I would try it, I told myself, and if I got too frustrated or the game was as obstinate as some have said, then I’d just quit. No pressure to finish. Just have a little fun and move on, able to judge for myself if the game is “too hard.”
I won’t beat around the bush too much. I did not quit, dear reader. I spent 154 hours in the world of Elden Ring, completed the story and most optional bosses (the ones I could find, anyway), and even got the platinum trophy for PS5 (which I guess isn’t that impressive, since a massive 10% of people who’ve played it on PS5 have done the same!). I had a lot of fun with this game, and there is a lot to love about it. Do I think it’s a “perfect game,” as many have claimed? Lord, no. Even after playing and loving it, there are some notable issues with it in terms of design and accessibility. But this is a game of moments and memories. There are some confounding, confusing design decisions, but when I found a way around some of the design, I had some amazing, incredible moments. I suppose I could say it’s an incredible game despite itself.
Let’s talk about some of those things I love. The art style and world design (on a visual level) are amazing. The actual graphics, as in things like texture, lighting, unique assets, etc. are not exactly optimal, but if you view the world from a distance and focus on the macro instead of the micro, this is a stunningly beautiful world. The word that came to mind at one point, as I was riding my spectral steed (what a cool description, too) through a low valley with a massive dragon sleeping in the distance and an enormous, glowing tree towering over virtually every corner of the map, was “majesty.” Elden Ring does the majesty of epic fantasy better than almost any game I’ve played. Regardless of the part of the world I was in, I could almost always swing the camera around and have some spectacular view (though this made the lack of a photo mode extra annoying).
The quiet, low soundtrack provides the perfect backdrop for this world, too. It doesn’t have the same kind of rousing pieces with dramatic swells that other fantasy games have (though I do like those types), and in fact it feels sort of… well, dead. But how perfect is that, given that this is a dying world, filled with ruins, both well-aged and in-progress? I kept waiting for the tempo or volume to kick up as I approached one of the many epic set pieces in the world, but it never did. The music stayed quiet, subdued. Like even the music had given up hope that this world could be saved. It’s seen too many Tarnished try and fail. You are no different. You don’t get a hero’s score.
Zooming in a bit more, I also loved the variety of cool locations in the world. Though there was a lot of copy/pasting with some assets, there were also a whole host of unique environments. An enormous mansion, beset on multiple sides by lava that flows beneath and around the grounds, spawning fiery slugs and seemingly tended by automaton iron maidens with masks and deadly, extending pendulum arms. A decaying swamp of putrid rot, surrounded by slapdash barriers of fire, meant to slow the spread of this poisonous disease. A besieged fortress, overtaken by monster and man, set on a hill over the sea. Seemingly endless enchanted towers with books and mystical trinkets scattered here and there. One my favorites: an underground city with (somehow) a starry sky, toppled buildings, ancestral woods, and crumbling columns.
There are also numerous caves, mines, and dungeons, though they’re all very similar in terms of design. One of the types of mines is crystal, though, which is important for considering something else I liked: environmental storytelling. There is an argument that the environmental storytelling in Elden Ring is too sparse, as the game’s insistence on being unhelpful to the player means that it’s easy to miss out on lots of narrative beats, big and small – but when it works, it’s incredibly satisfying. Let’s consider those enchanted towers I mentioned. I was in love as soon as I stepped through the threshold of the first tower. It was a tall, stone tower, set deep and solitary in the woods. There was a table with scrolls and what looked to be astrological devices strewn about, and the walls were lined with books, with a few piles stacked sloppily here and there as well. I said to Bella, my cat, “I think this is a wizard tower.” As I made my way up the winding steps, I noticed glowing crystals set on desks and floors. Not many, but enough to connect the idea of these crystals and magic use. Later, when I found one of the mines, the workers were mining the same crystals, and the beings overseeing them used magic, which reinforced the connection between magic and crystals. There’s a whole crystal economy, where witches/wizards somehow contract teams to mine crystals for them. So when I found a witch’s tower later in the game, I knew she was very powerful because the crystals in her castle were so massive they took up huge portions of the rooms in the tower. It may seem like an obvious connection, of course, but the game didn’t rely on written texts or logs to explain it, like many games do. I don’t mind reading lore, but there is something more elegant and efficient about dropping visual clues that the player can piece together.
Unfortunately, this design decision to be sparce in terms of how much the game communicates with the player was not always so elegant and efficient. As many have pointed out (and perhaps this isn’t new to Souls games, I’m not sure), the game doesn’t explain many of its systems. The “tutorial” section is easy to miss and provides very little in the way of real guidance. The game also lacks a quest list or way to track progress, which is especially frustrating when you aren’t sure where you should be going or where you’ve already been. Add to this what feels like sloppier combat than I expected (oh, this boss can swipe me through a wall? And this one somehow adjusts course in mid-air to hit me as I roll away? Cool cool), and I am more frustrated by the game’s design than its difficulty. If a game is challenging, that’s one thing. When a game’s design is lacking or seemingly antagonistic to the player, then the difficulty is a result of poor design, not legitimate challenge. I had to turn to my friends or the internet to explain many of the things that the game does not. I’ve seen some critics say that it’s just a part of the FromSoft formula. It builds community. I can understand that, and it sounds nice. That “community” was not always kind, or even helpful, though. Probably half of the threads or posts that I looked to for advice were filled with people refusing to provide aid because they thought the player should figure it out themselves and “just play the game.” In one Reddit post, someone asked a simple question about where to go after a certain big story event. The game, of course, doesn’t make it obvious. The first reply was something like “You could try playing the game.” Another was “Have you tried talking to NPCs?” The OP replied and said that they didn’t see any NPCs, to which the poster said something like “an NPC tells you.” Someone else chimed in and said that they could tell OP which NPC or where to find them, and someone else responded with “and play the game for them? Try actually looking around.” This is just one example, but there were many others, and some weren’t so tame. I don’t think the lack of information or instruction in a game deserves critical praise, and if the retort is that it drives you to a community outside of the game, and that community is even less helpful at times, that’s a pretty critical design flaw.
The combat was tough, yes, but once I power leveled a few times, it was much more satisfying. Without power leveling and/or having help with my build, the combat would have turned me away. Enemy AI seems to be programed to predict and punish many defensive moves, which makes some encounters feel cheap and unfair. After leveling to 125-150, I felt far more capable. I still got my ass kicked on occasion, but it usually felt like the result of bad decisions on my part. The thrill of beating some of the hardest bosses, like Malenia or Placidusax, was unparalleled, though. Each took me several tries, even at high level, so I was so charged when they went down. Similarly, fighting the Fire Giant with my friend Tab was fun if infuriating. My level was capped so I was much weaker than when I fought him alone, so we struggled a lot. We fought him dozens of times, and many of our deaths felt cheap (why is he suddenly floating yet still hitting us? And how does he keep magically sliding backwards without actually stepping?), but it was fun fighting alongside a friend and trying new strategies until we finally felled him. Tab was less than thrilled (they just wanted to progress, so it was a hollow victory for them), but I was energized by our big win. Less so with the final boss, though. He can eat my ass, cheap piece of shit.
I’d like to end by talking about my absolute favorite part of the game: a little witch named Ranni. Apparently, some people encounter Ranni early in the game, and she gives them the Spirit Calling Bell and Lone Wolf ashes. I missed her early on, so I had no clue who she was when I stumbled upon her witchy tower later in the game. With her big, floppy wizard hat and stitched-together doll body, she was like Gandalf mixed with the Corpse Bride. She has an ethereal glow and speaks softly, but she almost immediately asked if I would enter into her servitude. After spending hours in the world of Elden Ring, seeing all sorts of liars, backstabbers, and conniving murderers, the obvious answer to her question was “no.” So, of course I said “yes.” Because she is very pretty. And, luckily, it worked out! I totally fell for my other-worldly witchy doll woman. She has four hands and all my heart. When she went away during one part of her quest and I found her doll in my inventory, I was legitimately giddy with glee. I instantly sent pictures of my screen to friends with the caption: “best item in the game!” And I even made a meme about it:
Please, don’t judge my meme making skills. I made this with Snapchat in like 5 minutes, okay?
The scene where you find Ranni and slip a ring on that finger? Heart melting. And although I got all three major endings (to get the platinum trophy), hers was by far my favorite. But why did I love her? I mean, her visual design is stunning, and her voice is, indeed, ethereal and angelic, but how much did I really know about her? I went on to find out that I was far from alone in my love for this character, so it is “a thing,” but at a certain point I thought about how I would explain my adoration for Ranni without talking about how cool she looked, and I was left with little. Yes, she is a powerful witch who can visit the spirit world and take the form of inanimate objects, but her backstory is relatively thin, as is the case with much of the narrative in Elden Ring. But I still loved her, despite knowing only a small handful of things about her. In fact, my love for her is a pretty good metaphor for my love for this game. It might not make sense that I love her, because I know so little about her and am basing my affection mostly on design and a thin backstory. Elden Ring is imperfect, and I actively think some of the design is flawed, but I can’t say I didn’t love my time with it. Is it game of the year? Not for me. In fact, I’m fretting the fact that many outlets are already pledging to give this their Game of the Year because I feel it’s going to do anything but encourage FromSoft to address the many accessibility issues present. But, as I said, Elden Ring is a game of moments for me, and despite my complaints, I had some pretty fucking awesome moments in my 154 hours. And, of course, there’s always Ranni.
I’m sure I’ve brought up Chrono Trigger before. It is my favorite game of all time, after all. It’s an objectively great game, but it’s also very important to me on a personal level. I played it at a turning point in my life. I got it for my 15th birthday – my first after my parents had gotten a divorce and just as I was preparing to leave my middle school friends to start anew at a huge, intimidating high school. Not only did it distract me during those tumultuous times, it also fundamentally changed my relationship with video games and my identity on the whole. If I had to mark a specific time when I went from a kid who played games to a “Gamer,” it was just then. I’d loved games since I was a small child, but it never felt like much more than a fun distraction. My intense love for Chrono Trigger made me realize how deep my love for the hobby ran.
I could probably literally go on until the End of Time (eh? eh? get it?) about Chrono Trigger but suffice it to say I was beyond excited when Square announced a sequel would be coming to the PlayStation, which I had only recently acquired. Chrono Cross was released in 1999 in Japan, just four years after Chrono Trigger. Looking at the two games, that seems wild. It also seems wild to me because I am old now and four years seems like such a short period of time, whereas when I was 15 it seemed like a lifetime to wait for a sequel to the best game of all time. The game wouldn’t release until 2000 in the US, which made the wait that much more excruciating. I avoid prerelease hype for the most part now, but back then I devoured any scrap of info or media that I could find about this mysterious new sequel. I had only recently gotten the internet (insert old man emoji here), but I scoured sites like IGN and Gamespot for any rumor or news, and any gaming magazine that even mentioned it was an instant buy. The strategy guide, published by BradyGAMES, was released almost a week before the game and I snapped it up and tried my best to avoid flipping through it and ruining any surprises that were in store.
My original encounter with Chrono Cross was not quite as magical as my experience with Chrono Trigger was, which seems like a pretty common experience among Chrono fans. [Plenty of spoilers ahead.] Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game, and it was one of my favorite RPGs, but (like many) I was undeniably disappointed that the story wasn’t a direct continuation of the previous game. I wanted to know what my favorite characters were up to after Lavos was defeated. Did Crono still have all of those cats? What did Marle’s eventual reign look like? Where did Magus go? It felt, at the time, like Chrono Cross purposely neglected any and all questions of the sort. There were nods to the first game, but this felt like its own thing, and that was something of a letdown, if I was being honest. Even the major inclusion of Schala, one of my favorite characters from Chrono Trigger, seemed somewhat tenuous, at best. I loved Schala so much that I called the Nintendo Tip Line for the first time ever and asked if there was some way to save her from her fate in the Ocean Palace. I awkwardly, nervously lied and said, “I heard somewhere that there was a way to prevent her from dying so I, uh, just wanted to check.” The Game Counselor™ was like “uh… yeah, I don’t think so.”
I tried! Believe me! I tried. 😦
So, when I found out that Kid, one of the central characters in Chrono Cross, was Schala’s clone, and that you were fighting to free the real Schala from the Time Devourer, I had mixed feelings. That young Joey that called Nintendo to try and find out if Schala could be saved should have been thrilled! But this Schala, or her clone, didn’t seem like the character I knew and loved from Chrono Trigger. She was the opposite, in fact. Instead of being quiet, reflective, concerned, selfless, and sporting flowing purple hair and royal robes, she is spunky, brash, reckless, determined, loud, and wearing sporty clothing with a blonde ponytail. Look, I really like Kid as a character, but she is more like a mix of Ayla and Marle than anything remotely close to Schala. This is just one example of the ways the game changed or kind of glossed over familiar elements from Chrono Trigger, making it feel more like a game inspired by CT and not a sequel. Again, I enjoyed my time with it and even got all the endings and characters, but I don’t know that it hit me as hard as I was hoping it would.
Enter the long-awaited Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. Like many Chrono fans, I’d had my fingers crossed for years that this would come out. While I love Chrono Trigger and would love some kind of remaster (Pixel Remaster, pls) or reissue, I’ve played that game on the SNES, PlayStation, Nintendo DS, Steam, and iOS, while Chrono Cross hasn’t been offered the same kind of multi-platform accessibility. Plus, it’s a 3D PS1 RPG, which requires a bit more polish to make it run and look good on contemporary hardware, whereas the 2D sprites of Chrono Trigger are pretty timeless. I was eager to try Cross again, not just because it would be slightly prettier and more accessible (and I could get trophies for it, heh), but because I’d hoped that with time many of my conflicted feelings about the game would situate themselves. I was worried, though. What if I didn’t like it this time? What if years of newer and more streamlined RPGs had spoiled me and Chrono Cross felt stiff and hard to navigate? I’d tried to play the Final Fantasy VIII remaster and quit shortly into it because of these reasons, so what if that happened again with one of my favorite RPGs of all time?
It did not, dear reader. After beating this edition of Chrono Cross five times, getting all the characters and endings, and snagging the platinum trophy on PS5, I can say that I have a much deeper appreciation for the core game now. It’s not perfect, but it was wildly ambitious, and I think it achieved much of what it tried to. For example, when I first entered combat and saw the multi-attack/hit percentage system, I was like “oh no.” I’d forgotten about this little wrinkle to the combat system, and even now I’m not a fan of the misleading percentages. But I think the system itself works. Having to think about whether I should swing big and go for a critical strike at the cost of possibly whiffing, or use lighter, more guaranteed strikes to build up my stamina for a big magic attack, made combat feel dynamic and active, which I liked. The magic system, where each character had an affinity, but you could slot most magic attacks into anyone’s inventory was perhaps needlessly cumbersome (I still wish there was an easier way to save builds, rather than manually slotting them in over and over whenever you switch characters, or using the crappy autofill option), but I also appreciated that it allowed for seemingly infinite unique builds of your enormous roster of teammates. Yes, I relied on the same handful of spells for most of my runs, but with every new playthrough I thought about new and interesting builds I could do if I was more adventurous.
I was also worried about how janky and jaggy it might look, and although it took me a bit to get used to the shuddering that seems to persist with remasters of PS1 games (where, say, character idle animations sort of shudder without cause), I was overall very impressed with how the characters look (in particular) They retain the odd proportions of early 3D humanoid character models, but the colorful, vibrant cast look so good now, and their new portraits are gorgeous. I read somewhere that they lost the original high-res files for the background art, so they had to use AI upscaling to make them 4K compatible, and it seems to mostly work. Some backgrounds do look a bit murky, making it hard to distinguish between paths that you can navigate and environmental art, but some backgrounds seem to look more ethereal and artistic, which was a nice surprise. The Sea of Eden looked especially stunning.
I don’t know that I need to say much about the music. Chrono Cross’s soundtrack has been lauded as one of the best in video games since it came out, and I’ve been happy to see new people discover how vibrant, eclectic, and haunting it can be. I can’t even say that it stirred my nostalgia like other video game music has, mainly because I still listen to it pretty frequently while I’m writing or doing something that requires concentration. What didn’t quite stick in my memory as well were the finer details of the story, though. And, having played it again several times now, I can see why. Like many Japanese games, the plot really requires you to pay attention (and even then, its vague, twisty nature means it can be hard to track). Having played it before allowed me to pay even closer attention to subtle details, and I actually came to a much deeper appreciation for the story and how it really does continue the core premise of Chrono Trigger. What I’d once thought of dismissively as “nods” to the first game are far more significant. There are characters that are close to CT characters, like Glenn (a brave knight, like Glenn from CT) and Luccia (a genius scientists with a lively laugh, much like Lucca from CT), and I used to think of them as not-so-subtle tributes. But there is a line in a late-game dungeon that talks about how people exist as forms across many timelines and dimensions, which makes me think that these are not “nods,” but legitimate alternate versions of known characters. A “what if this character was born in a different world or time” kind of thing. I also don’t know that I fully appreciated Robo’s role in the story back in the day, but his sacrifice moved me this time around. I also really loved Balthasar’s significant role, though I really wish they’d given him a Nu companion.
Okay, yes, let’s just move on, shall we?
Speaking of companions, the ability to recruit a sprawling, freaky cast of characters to follow you into battle was so ambitious and I appreciate the dev team for getting in as many characters as they did. I’ve read that they’d hoped to make it so that every character you speak with could be recruited but had to scale back due to scope, but I’m happy with the current roster. The game forces you to switch it up a few times (with the forced protagonist body and team swap), and I rotated pretty often, but some of my regular team members were Kid, Leena, Starky, Marcy, Riddel, Luccia, and Harle. Being able to slot most magic into any character meant that I didn’t have to think as much about who was good at what, so I usually went with who I thought would be fun to have in my party. I have to say, I feel like a Luccia apologist. She is framed as a typical mad scientist, more interested in making strides in science than morality or doing what’s “right” (plus she has poor Pip in a cage). I couldn’t help it, though. Look at her! Maybe it’s the new, high def character model, but I was smitten.
But she could never take the place of my main squeeze, Harle. I fell in love with Harle when I first played the game, and I guess playing Chrono Cross again after all these years does cast her in a different light. I remember her being a much more sympathetic character. While she does express conflicted feelings and regret about (seemingly) having to oppose you, she ultimately does just that. Was I mostly smitten with her because she seemed to have a thing for “me” (Serge)? I mean, she is adorable, and I love her French accent and how flirty and feisty she is, but she’s also pretty rude to my friends. At one point, she says “If you had to chooze between ze world and moi… which would you chooze?” I think I’ve always said that I would choose her, yet she seems unwilling to make the same choice for me. One of the endings does make it seem like you’re living a happy(ish) life alongside Harle as Lynx, though, so I guess that will have to be enough. With the rising popularity of romance systems in games, I do look back at JRPGs from this era, like Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII and wish they could somehow retroactively add a dating system. If they did, I tell myself that I’d end up replaying the game many times over to date most or all the roster, but deep down I think I can admit that I would just keep picking Harle and muttering “next time. Next time I’ll choose Luccia” under my breath.
In the end, I was shocked by how much I loved playing through this game again, over 20 years after my first time with it. There was some nostalgia, but that didn’t impact my opinion of it nearly as much as I thought it would. Yes, there are some minor performance issues and I wish I didn’t have to stand exactly in front of chests and doors to open them, but there was far more to love about this experience and after getting the platinum trophy I walked away reluctantly, somehow still wanting to play more. I have other games to get to and there’s not much else for me to accomplish in Chrono Cross, but these playthroughs brought with them a more profound appreciation for the colorful, quirky, lovely world and characters I spent so much time with. Square’s willingness to release this with such fanfare gives me some faint hope that, should this game find success, we might actually see the fabled Chrono Break someday. They trademarked the name at some point and seemingly dropped the project, but with their recent investment in HD-2D games and willingness to develop games with retro art styles that are less development intensive in terms of funding (like I Am Setsuna), I remain somewhat hopefully that they’ll see the potential in giving a small but experienced team some funding to close out a Chrono trilogy. I mean, they could also throw a ton of money at a 3D remake of Chrono Trigger. After this experience with Chrono Cross, I just want more, damn it.
Ugh. Heartbreaking.Gato. 😦Okay, so the fourth wall breaking was a little silly.
The weather here in sleepy Sycamore, Illinois, is cold and dreary. It’s a grey and snowy day… and it’s April. You know what’s not cold and grey, though? My love of video games. That was the absolute worst segue anyone’s ever written but I am tired, and I’d like to get back to playing the new Chrono Cross remaster, so let’s just let that one slide. It seems a fact that time works differently during a pandemic, so I’m not sure if I should say “it’s already April” or “it’s only April,” but I wanted to jot down some thoughts about the games I’ve played recently, regardless, because I feel like Chrono Cross will get a post of its own soon. I’m still playing Halo Infinite online, but I don’t have much to add other than I am absolutely styling in my cat ears and sparkly purple armor. They keep adding new armor components and accessories but, no. Get out of my face. I just want sparkly purple kitty time.
13 Sentinels Aegis Rim
I do have more thoughts on 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim, though, since I’ve finished it. I’ll keep it short, since I’ve already talked a bit about it, but I ended up really loving it and getting the platinum trophy for it. Admittedly, much of my love remains centered on the aesthetic. The water-color inspired character and background art is just gorgeous, and I never lost my sense of awe and appreciation for it as the game went on. The music and voice acting are also stellar, making the game feel as close to a 1980s-isnpired anime as you can get. The story was very hard to follow, but at a certain point I gave up trying to untwist the knotted narrative because more twists would inevitably pop up. I feel like I was rewarded for that, in a way, because everything became clear in the end. Well, most things. Look, if you asked me to recount the story I’d probably get lost in my own attempt, but I think the gist of this multi-layered story is get-able.
The combat sections were alright. I’m not a huge RTS player, so I was more than happy to set the difficulty to easy and handily hand the enemies their ass time and time again. There is yet another character that deals with gender issues in an annoyingly indirect way. I’ve written previously on characters in Japanese games that flirt with trans-ness or gender fluidity, but yet again the developers fail to commit. Tsukasa Okino is a “male” character that chooses to dress up as (and embody) a woman, flirts openly with a male character, and [SPOILERS] in the epilogue, when “he” embraces living in a simulation, he makes a comment about switching genders, saying “It’s not just the clothes. I can be whatever I want here.” While I applaud Japanese developers for dealing with things like gender and sexuality more often and openly in their games, I wish they wouldn’t dance around it as much. This character’s gender is such a big part of their story – why not just use clear language instead of talking around it?
What I won’t talk around (aren’t you loving this terrible transitions?) is my adoration of Yuki Takamiya. What a badass cutie. I didn’t love who she ended up with, but I looked forward to playing her story segments every time. She’s a delinquent and a detective, which is not a common combo in Japanese media, in my experience. Young detectives are usually virtuous, working with police or other agencies to bust the bad guy (or that’s used as a ploy to hide the villain, ala Persona 5). Yuki does work with law enforcement, but only because she’s forced to, essentially. But, yeah, I just wanted to shout out my favorite character. Carry on.
Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
Have I mentionedthatIlovePersonagames? They are, for me, the types of games where I feel a sadness when I’m close to completing them. I get so invested in the worlds that P-Studio makes that I want to live in them forever and rub shoulders (or eat beef bowls) with the wonderful characters that inhabit them. After each Persona game, I attempted to fill the new Persona-shaped hole in my soul by buying merch or other Persona games. It’s how I ended up with Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, which I was honestly not very sure I’d like. It’s a dungeon crawler and the character models are chibi – two things I’m not much of a fan of. I hadn’t played my handheld systems in a while, but since I’d busted out my cool SNES 3DS to play Metroid games, I figured I’d finally give Persona Q a shot. If I didn’t like it, I could just stop playing it, right?
Well, I’m probably 50-60 hours in so far and you couldn’t make me stop playing this game. I say “probably” because I ordered a new, sealed copy from Amazon and it came with save files, meaning someone obviously owned this “new” copy before. If you owned a copy and had a P4 protagonist save file named “Mike” or a P3 protagonist file named “Minato,” I have your game. Well, it’s mine now. But thank you for the save file because I used it to start a new game plus and got your personas and weapons (and impressive playtime), which helped a lot. While it’s true that I prefer to see my characters (and enemies) as I run around dungeons, the first-person dungeon crawling is pretty fun, and I can’t deny that I quickly came to like drawing in the map on the 3DS screen. What I love about this game is, of course, the characters and story. Yes, they’re in chibi form, which is unfortunate, but when I realized that all of the original voice actors from both Persona 3 and Persona 4 were back and delivering tons of lines, I was so in. The writing, too, is just as good as the core games, and I’ve found myself legitimately laughing out loud a few times. Add in an amazing soundtrack of P3 and P4 tracks, and I am in love. I’m not yet finished with it (I’m on the last dungeon) but I’m also in no rush to beat it, despite looking forward to Persona Q2 with much excitement now.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
As further evidenced above, every Persona game I’ve played so far has been a hit. Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5 and Royal, Persona 5 Strikers, all three dancing games, and Persona Q have all won me over in one way or another. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is the first game in the series that I haven’t loved. Please, don’t get me wrong: it’s a solid game. As with Persona Q, the full cast of P3 and P4 voice actors return, which is always a big deal for me. They do stellar work and it brings so much to the games when they’re present. I also really liked seeing big, high definition art assets for the characters. There are lots of great, classic Persona settings and expressions to enjoy, and I will never shun more time with super bae Mitsuru.
The writing doesn’t seem quite as good as the other Persona games, though there is a ton of it. This is a fighting game, yes, but there is a lot of story. Fighting games usually foreground the gameplay and the story (if there is one) takes a definite backseat. Not so here. Not only can you play through the story mode from three different perspectives, each character also has a very healthy story that you can play through separate from the main story. There are some great moments and exchanges here, but overall the writing was much weaker than what I’m used to in Persona media. Ultimately, though, the kind of fighting in this game (think Guilty Gear) is not really my thing. I am no fighting game expert so I am ill-equipped to explain why I don’t vibe with the feel of this kind of game, but I mostly button-mashed my way through the first half of the game and turned on auto-play for the rest. The sprite work is great, though, and I was charmed by new (to me) character Labrys. I beat the three story runs and Chie’s segment (she’s my favorite fighter, I think) but I think I’m okay with putting it aside now.
Hitman 2 and Hitman 3
I played bits of the first Hitman trilogy back in the day, but I don’t think I ever finished any of them. I really liked the gameplay and, more to the point, the concept of a world of possibilities. The assassination part was fun and fulfilled some boyhood James Bond/The Professional fantasy, sure – but I have always dreamed of a video game that allows for ultimate realism. A fully rendered world where I can do the same things I can in real life – pick up a random can from the ground, enter any closet or room, turn on faucets for no reason, etc. The Hitman games aren’t fully realized in that sense, but they were moving in that direction, even with the early entries. The idea of having choice in how you complete levels wasn’t new, but the number of choices you had in these games seemed staggering. It wasn’t just “go in stealthy or go in loud.” It was “go in stealthy or go in disguise or snipe from far away or don’t go in at all and rig an explosive that will catch them on the way out or poison a drink that will be carried to them or go in loud or…” you get the idea.
I’d heard so many good things about this latest Hitman trilogy, and after Tab listed Hitman 3 as their game of the year for 2021, I decided to pick it up. I’d also nabbed Hitman 2 on PSN, so I started with that game and played them back-to-back. Generally, it was the same great concept from the early games but with a lot more style and attention to detail. The story was very good but my favorite thing about these new games is the level design. So much thought and care seem to have gone into considering the many ways players might approach a level. Yes, there are specific ways in which the game seems to want you to tackle it, but it doesn’t restrict you too much. I will say that I felt like a very lazy assassin the first few missions. I would sneak in, very stealthily, just trying to scope out the scene and find access to the target. But as soon as I was close, I would just find a dark corner, pew pew them with my silenced pistol, and slip into the shadows. It sounds kind of cool but in practice it was pretty dull and uninspired.
I knew it was on me, though, so with the “Ark Society” mission, where you attend an elaborate secret society party and have to eliminate two socialites and, if possible, extract someone without being detected, I decided to take my time, listen to conversations, and establish a plan. I found out that one of the socialites was planning to hold a ceremony where she faked burning herself alive in a huge effigy, Wicker Man-style, so I sneakily sabotaged the escape hatch below the effigy, dressed as the master of ceremonies, lit her on fire and walked away as everyone cheered, thinking it was a part of the show. For the other socialite, I followed an old fling of hers, knocked him out and took his clothes, stole a very expensive artifact/necklace they were both after, and got her alone before offering to put the necklace on her – and choking her with it. I then found the extraction target and walked right out the front door. Pew pewing people from the shadows is all well and good, but there is a far more rewarding thrill when a level unfolds like that. I didn’t have the same experience with the oft-discussed Knives Out-like mansion level (I didn’t steal the detective’s outfit and was in the middle of scoping things out when I saw an opportunity for a quick, easy kill), but I did have similar experiences with the mission set during a ritzy party at a vineyard. I took the winemaker’s outfit and acted as him as I took one of the targets on a tour of the winery. At each stop, Agent 47 described a way in which someone might accidentally perish, so I knew I was probably able to eliminate this target any number of ways here. When we got to a grape pressing station with a massive hydraulic press, which she stepped under, I deactivated the safety mechanism and turned on the press. The target disappeared into a squishy red puddle and everyone in the area just thought it was a terrible accident, so I walked away with no consequence.
That was probably my most outrageous kill, but my favorite level overall was the nightclub level in Germany. A trope in some espionage stories is when the agent is betrayed by their own agency and other agents of equal(ish) skill and ability are hunting them. This level lets you live out that scenario in a loud, thumping night club, and there was something so thrilling about weaving in and out of large crowds, hunting these agents who are becoming increasingly nervous as their partners on comms stop responding, one by one. It was a far more active level than most, but it still required a lot of legwork and intel gathering, making it so rewarding in the end. I also had a moment where I really appreciated the depth of the DualSense’s vibration feature. I was several minutes into the mission, very focused, when I had a moment of realization that maybe my TV was too loud. I could feel the loud bass in the controller, and it legitimately felt like speakers pumping. My TV, it turns out, was not that loud. That’s not what really impressed me, though. After realizing how subtle and realistic the vibrations were, I paid closer attention to them and found that it’s also directional. When Agent 47’s right side was toward the speaker, the right side of the controller vibrated. As I rotated, the vibration shifted to the front of the controller (when facing the speaker), then the left side (when that side was facing it). And it was dynamic, too, of course – the closer I was to the speaker, the more pronounced the vibration was, and all that. A small detail, yes, but it made me appreciate the artists who probably put a lot of time into things like it.
Metroid Fusion
After playing and loving Super Metroid, Metroid Dread, and Samus Returns, I wasn’t done with Metroid games. All three of those games were bangers, as the kids say, so I ready for more baddie-bopping and spooky-scanning as Samus, and I turned to one of the two remaining games that I own: Metroid Fusion. A version of the “Title” theme plays over the intro cutscene, which portrays a critical part of the Metroid lore (the, well, fusion of Samus’ DNA with Metroid DNA), so I was all ready to delve into another atmospheric environment. And then I started playing and the music was more action-suspense than eerie horror. It was also a bit jolting to go from those previous games, which had very tight, intuitive controls, to controls which felt a little trickier to master. I’m sure they felt great on a GBA back in 2002, but let’s just say I was not spinning and grappling with the greatest of ease. There was also an incredibly annoying end sequence, where I was forced to traverse my way to a very hard boss, defeat them, then traverse my way to another boss that I had to defeat. That sounds reasonable, but they purposefully block off a save room between fights (and there is no auto-save), so having to re-do that segment several times was infuriating and time-consuming.
I’m starting with my complaints, but my experience overall was positive. Those are some notable grievances, but I loved the corrupted Samus chasing you [SPOILER] and I especially liked that they pulled the ol’ enemies to allies twist at the end, where the “bad” Samus attacks the final boss with you. I still loved the core gameplay of puzzling out each new area and frequently obtaining new powers, and I am always down for new suit color combos. Yes, there were a few annoyances with this experience, but overall I was still very into it and I’m ready to move onto the original Metroid soon.
Find Love or Die Trying!
This is an indie visual novel by Auden Jin that I played for an episode of the podcast. For Valentine’s Day, we chose a romance visual novel or dating sim from itch.io to play and discuss. The premise of this game seemed like silly fun and the art looked good, so this was my choice. I wasn’t expecting much (the quality of games on itch.io varies wildly, which is not a bad thing but is a reality), but I was totally charmed by this game. There are so many twists and turns in the story, some of them very goofy, but I was fully on board. The characters were fun takes on existing tropes, there were some genuinely funny moments, and I legitimately found myself invested in the story. This was a nice surprise.
Minecraft
I’ve written about Minecraft before, but somehow I keep coming back to it. Tab and I jumped back in recently and we built a very, very long railway to a jungle biome we had scoped out last year. We started building a new town there, so I decided to make a Wayne Manor/Batcave. I have on almost every server I’ve played on, save this one, so it was time. As I was digging out and shaping the Batcave, guess what appeared? Bats! I was so excited. It was a little embarrassing. But I am nearing the end of construction and I can’t wait.
Horizon Forbidden West
What was not a surprise (this is the last game so you no longer have to suffer these terrible segues) was how much I loved Horizon Forbidden West. Horizon Zero Dawn is one of my favorite games of last gen, so I made sure to get my collector’s edition of Forbidden West pre-ordered as soon as I was able. I think, as I did with Zero Dawn, I’ll mostly let the screenshot dump do the talking here, but there are some things I want to say about my time with the game. If you follow gaming news or know/follow people who’ve played this game, you’ve likely heard about how gorgeous it is by now. And, well, it is. I would say I don’t think these screenshots do it justice, but they come pretty close. The game is gorgeous in screenshots and in motion. You can pause the game at almost any point, go into photo mode, and find a cool or beautiful picture to take. The environment, the character models, the enemies, even the small animals scurrying about, all look amazing. I even found myself staring up at the night sky several times, looking for unique features or constellations. And, you know what? There are constellations! None that I recognized as real, but I can tell that there are clusters of stars that some environmental artist went to the trouble of making look like little constellations. I really appreciate little things like that.
Speaking of little things, there was that whole, dumb controversy (if you can call it that) about Aloy having facial fuzz. First of all, how is it a bad thing that we now have video game consoles powerful enough to render such a minute detail? Second, you can actually see it in the game. It wasn’t some highly rendered cut scene or piece of promo art. Character models are so highly rendered and beautiful in this game. As with the first game, I frequently found myself stopping to marvel at graphical details big and small. Hair! Look at Aloy’s hair!
Amazing. One of the things I love most about these games is the combat, though, and I loved it just as much here. I didn’t find myself using as many gadgets as I did in Zero Dawn, but I also didn’t really mind that. I was perfectly happy rolling out of the way of a charging thunderjaw at the very last second, spinning, notching an arrow, then releasing it to strike a tiny component on its back and running for cover. I played over 150 hours of this game and never got tired of the combat. Some of the new dinos were challenging, but I still love the thunderjaws and tallnecks. I have some thoughts on spoiler-y things, so I’ll add a [SPOILER WARNING] here, which includes screenshots that show spoilers. They begin after these next two pictures.
The story didn’t pleasantly surprise me like the first game’s did (how could it, though, since I had no idea what to expect from the first one?), but I did end up really liking it. As soon as I saw the primary villains floating down from the sky, I was like “is this a Superman movie?” And it kind of was. The villains in this game are absolutely Kryptonians. Advanced civilization hailing from an exploding planet, impermeable to damage (save one key weakness!), flight, Lex Luthor-looking-ass as the leader… But I dug it! They were campy and fun, and it was very rewarding to take them down. Celebrity performances aren’t always great in games, but I also thought Carrie-Anne Moss was excellent.
The other spoiler-y thing I want to talk about is the sunwing travel mechanic, unlocked later in the story. It was vaguely spoiled for me by the kind of people who are like “I won’t spoil it but” and then proceed to drop specific “hints” that then actually spoil it. I wasn’t terribly mad about it, though, because it allowed me to push through the story early enough to have plenty of time with my beloved sunwing. I wasn’t sure I would use it much because I don’t use the other mounts in the game and I generally like travelling in open-world games on foot, but I almost instantly fell in love with it. It felt very good to control, it looked and sounded amazing (the dino sound design needs more credit in this game, too), and it was so useful. One of my favorite things to do was call the sunwing just before jumping off a high ledge and having it swoop down and snatch me out of the air. So fucking cool. I do agree that they waited a little long to introduce the option of flight, but I was able to get a ton of flying time in and I loved it.
I also loved the swimming in the game. Well, after obtaining the breathing apparatus. Before then, I would try and explore deep, scary caverns and start to feel a bit of real panic when I’d get turned around or stuck on something. Once I got the device, I was free to explore submerged ruins, deep caverns, oceanic wrecks and more to my heart’s content. And I did, and it felt great. The swimming controls in this game are like most others, but they do feel slightly refined and very responsive, making cutting through the water feel more natural and smoother than I’m used to. I should wrap this up, but I’ll add a few more minor thoughts. I loved some of Aloy’s outfits. The Carja Shadow was by far my favorite aesthetically, so I rocked that for a big chunk of the game. Once I started nearing end-game stuff I decided to take the time to earn and upgrade the Nora Thunder Warrior ‘fit, which doesn’t look as cool but has pretty great stats. The glider was very cool but I’m glad they kept climbing mostly the same. It seems like a lot of people want to climb everything in games post-Breath of the Wild, but I really like the minor challenge of having to think about where I’m climbing, how I’ll get from one place to another, if there is a best route, etc. It reminds me of Tomb Raider in that sense, and I like it. Okay, I’d meant to let the screenshots speak for themselves, but I ended up doing plenty of yapping myself. I’ll shut up now, though I could go on and on about this beautiful, amazing game. Thanks for reading.
A New Game Plus 