Final Fantasy VII is a classic JRPG. There's no doubt about that. And for years, fans clamored for a proper modernized remake. And in 2020, that wish finally came true. It looks cool, but I don't know if I'll ever play since I don't have any Sony consoles and I haven't heard any rumblings of it coming to Xbox. But that's not really the end of the world to me, as I've had a love/hate relationship with Final Fantasy VII since it was originally released. So whatever. If it comes to Xbox, I'll play it. If it doesn't, I'll lose no sleep.
The original Final Fantasy is a classic JRPG. Yet it's one that nobody ever asked for a modernized remake. And yet, here we are. Stranger Of Paradise is a kinda sorta remake of Final Fantasy, just without the budget of the Final Fantasy VII remake. And most likely it'll be ignored by most gamers. Of course, I should really call it a remake in full-on air quotes because Stranger Of Paradise is completely off the rails. Instead of a world map, it basically plays out in glorified episodes. Instead of the blank slate party the original game had, we now have super emo dudes a la Final Fantasy XV. Instead of those glorious chip tunes, we've got Frank Sinatra and nu metal. I'm dead serious. And instead of turn based combat, we've got a crazy complicated and compelling action RPG on our hands. The story in Stranger Of Paradise is far from faithful. At its best, it's a loose retelling that falls somewhere between fan fiction and prequel. To put it bluntly, this game is a total mess. Yet, for all its misses, I can't help but kind of love it - or at least love that exists. This is the sort of Final Fantasy game that makes me love Square Enix. Not because the game is great, but because they're willing to take such stupid risks on such a beloved franchise all these years later. Look, I've been playing Final Fantasy games for like thirty years now. Good or bad, I'm just happy they're still making Final Fantasy games that are interesting enough to warrant a conversation. Now real quick, let's try to even define what Stranger Of Paradise even is. When it was originally announced, it was shown off as a straight up modern remake of Final Fantasy - not unlike the Final Fantasy VII Remake. (I still can't believe "Remake" is in the actual title of that one). But upon release, Stranger Of Paradise was referred to as a dark alternate retelling of the original game. But y'know what? Call it whatever you want - a remake, retelling, reimagining, reboot, official fan fiction. Ultimately, it's more a prequel than anything making the "Origins" in its title even more fitting. It kind of doesn't matter, though. The truth is, the original game was pretty light on story, and your party of four characters were just nameless classes. Basically, this game just takes the main quest beats and throws original characters and story on top of it, often while trying to tie it into the rest of the series. And about those characters... they're pretty awful. But maybe that's part of the charm here. There was a time when Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest felt like sibling rivalries. But in 2022, it feels like Dragon Quest has doubled down on staying true to its early fantasy roots and poetic D&D storytelling and world building, whereas Final Fantasy is fine with going off the rails and featuring insane inaccurisms. To put it bluntly, if you've been following Final Fantasy for the past thirty something years, I don't think you're drawn to the series because of its great characters or incredible stories. So yeah, you're going to see some memes about Jack's inane "Chaos" monologues. But if you're a series fan, then you're not really surprised either. What Stranger Of Paradise really has going for it is a deeply enthralling job system, and some seriously fun combat courtesy of Team Ninja. Oh yeah, that's the other thing - the Dead Or Alive developer made this Final Fantasy game. Now that's a sentence I never thought I'd type. The systems really started to make sense to me a few hours in, and I've had a blast exploring the job system, unlocking new skills, and mixing and matching them accordingly to make an awesome build for Jack. It's really awesome to tap a button and switch between a heavier melee build and then a red mage who's capable of sending all kinds of elemental magic flying. And Team Ninja obviously knows how to do combat right, so every encounter feels brisk and fun whether I'm parrying oncoming attacks or ending things in a rain of blood via glory kills that finish off weakened foes. While I've always been more drawn to turn-based combat in my JRPG's, I have to admire this flashy take on Dark Souls style combat here. My main hangup with Stranger Of Paradise is the level design. If you thought Final Fantasy XIII was too linear, then you're not gonna like what this looks like. Though each mission takes place in a different area with its own unique visuals, there's some settings that are just plain ugly. Though there's also some sights to be seen. It's a true mixed bag. But the levels themselves do feel a bit uninspired and backtracking can be a pain because there's no map (unless I'm missing it). But none of that really matters because against all odds, Stranger Of Paradise has an awful lot going for it. The decision to make this a side-story/prequel means that the stakes are much lower than with Final Fantasy XVI. It means that there's more room for experimentation and expectations are lower. And the game truly benefits from all this. Stranger Of Paradise has a fantastic battle system, a fun job system, awesome boss battles, and - if you stick with it - a story that actually gets pretty dang compelling. I remember years ago pushing through Final Fantasy Type-0 because it was "so bad, it's good." That's not the case here. Stranger Of Paradise is actually a fun reboot (or whatever). And fun is what gaming is all about at the end of the day. It's also always a breath of fresh air to watch the credits roll on an RPG in under twenty hours. Believe it or not, in 2022 there's a Final Fantasy game on shelves that I'd call an honest to goodness hidden gem.
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The biggest flaw with Tunic is that it stealth launched a mere three weeks after the release of Elden Ring. As we all know, From Software's epic is a strong contender for Game Of The Year. Some folks are proclaiming it the greatest game ever made. People are talking about Elden Ring. Blogs, podcasts, fans, critics... It's Elden Ring all the time. And because of that hype train, it's a little hard to take notice of a new indie game that looks quite a bit like the Link's Awakening remaster. But here we are.
Although the look and tone of Tunic is nothing like Elden Ring, it's hard to not find comparisons. Especially given that Elden Ring hangs so heavy in the gamer subconscious in 2022. So let's take a look at Tunic for a moment. It's cure, sure. But it's also an action RPG that drops you into a giant world with almost nothing to protect yourself. It gives you no clear direction about what to do or where to go. Combat is brutally difficult. More and more, the comparisons feel apt. I'm only saying this because for those of us who have spent countless hours in Elden Ring, it's sort of hard to just immediately jump into a game like Tunic. I can't help but feel a little fatigued. That's probably why I felt zero guilt turning on the included easy mode in Tunic. I'd like to experience this game. But I'm not in the mood for masochism. So whatever. As soon as I started to feel overwhelmed by the clunky combat, I knew it was time. You can decide at any moment to turn off death, and to have unlimited stamina. I did both, and Tunic became a different sort of game altogether. I don't care if this means I'm not hardcore. But it's a pretty game and an interesting game, and if these cheats are the only way I'll see it, then so be it. I'm not going to say the combat is bad, because it's not really. But it does sort of throw you off. This game looks like Zelda, so I can't help but want it to play like Zelda. Instead, the combat strives to be like Dark Souls. And in turn, that makes it feel clunky. Things did start to improve once I found a shield, but far too often I found myself trying to parry or look for openings in defense only to be swarmed by three or five enemies at a time and it just put me into pure panic mode. I probably would have given up on Tunic after an hour if it weren't for one compelling addition. There's a conceit that you must find pages of a missing game manual throughout the world that serves as your guide forward. This is brilliant. The pages look like they're torn from some lost Famicom game. Most of the text isn't in English (or any real world language) but the pictures can serve up hints if you study them. Slowly the pages become your maps and your explanations of where you need to go, what you need to get, or how you interact with the world. This faux manual is so cool that it makes me wish that Tunic had gotten a physical release with a physical manual, though I guess that would have blown the whole point of needing to collect the pages in game. Oh well. But if I'm being honest, about three hours into Tunic the game really started to wear out its welcome for me. I don't know that it's anything that game does wrong exactly. But more, my own expectations can't really be satisfied. There's this part of me that looks at the game, and just wishes it was more like Link's Awakening - mainly because of how it looks. That wish just nags at me as I struggle with the combat and roam the world. The thought of firing it back up to continue has a level of tedium to it that bums me out. I keep saying "I should get back to Tunic," but I keep finding excuses to not. So I think that's telling me something and it's time to just accept that this one wasn't really for me. My first moments with Elden Ring are probably the perfect analogy for the game as a whole. I stumbled out of a chamber and in front of me was a cliff leading to a deep chasm. I hit the Y button to read a note left behind by another player. "Try jumping," it read. So I did, only to be greeted by that classic Dark Souls "You Died" message. That's right – it took me probably less than two minutes to get myself killed in Elden Ring. And yet, I just kind of shook my head and smirked.
I need to tell you that while I totally admire From Software, it's always been from a distance. I find their games fascinating and I respect everything they do. And yet, I've never really been able to get into their games. Mostly because frankly, I'm just not that good at video games I guess? Or probably more accurately, I don't always seem to have the patience to stick with such obtuse games. I did try banging my head against the wall in Dark Souls some years back – and I thought it was really a cool and interesting game. But I just couldn't make much progress in it. I also picked up Dark Souls III on launch for some reason, but found the experience even more off-putting. And yet, I'm glad these games exist because there should be a game for every kind of gamer out there to love. But my goodness, the hype for Elden Ring has been hard to escape. As a dude who's had trouble making a dent in the Souls games, and as someone who never watched Game Of Thrones, I can't say that the teaming of From and Martin meant all that much to me. But as the reviews starting rolling out and the game was getting near universal acclaim and comparisons to Breath Of The Wild, it became hard to resist this one. The concept is certainly enough to make me perk up – what if the Souls style of gameplay was pushed into a Breath Of The Wild open world? What if instead of hitting a wall you could just turn around and walk in another direction and explore at your own pace? And so I figured why not? Maybe, just maybe this could be the From Software game that finally gets its hooks in me. My first few hours with Elden Ring were reminiscent of Dark Souls, yet the experience was miles away. I mean, I always knew I was playing the game that might as well be called Dark Souls IV. It had the same style of play, same cryptic systems, same tone. And yet, the actual game was so different in execution. Whereas my attempts at playing Dark Souls I & III were punishing affairs that found me push forward for as long as I could stand it (and that was never very long), Elden Ring just offers some reprice. The difficulty never lets up, mind. Instead, it offers you a whole ridiculously huge world to explore. I mean really big. And any time I feel like I'm in over my head, I have a short list of other threads I can go tug at. It helps that everyone's talking about Elden Ring right now. So there's always juicy little tidbits that send me off to do something else. Thanks to various podcasts and websites I've kept a document in One Note reminding me of little things I want to do or explore. Case in point, I was a couple hours in before I realized I had missed (the very easy to miss) tutorial section of the game. So I went back to the start and played through it twice, easily farming enough extra Ruins to bump me up a couple levels. Sometimes I'd boot the game to with some explicit goal in mind – find the witch that gives you summons for instance. Or grind until I could afford a crafting kit and torch to open other things up to me. Other time I'd take note of little areas I wanted to check out, and then I'd just go off exploring hoping for the best. I scraped beaches and jumped into caves with a mix of excitement and trepidation. But one thing is for sure – no Souls game ever hit me like this before. I found myself thinking about Elden Ring while driving home from work. I'd think about what it was I wanted to accomplish tonight after my daughter went to bed and the chores were done. Few games hit me hard enough that I'm constantly mapping out a mental To Do List like this. Something the game has also offered to me unexpectedly is a social component. While I certainly spend a lot of my free time reading about games, I don't often get to talk about them. My wife is pretty casual in her gaming. Since my daughter was born, I've kind of lost touch with my online gaming buds. And since I don't do the whole social media thing, there's no option for gaming discussion there. I do have one gaming buddy I keep in touch with as best I can, but he's not really into a lot of the games that I am. Maybe that's why I keep this blog in the first place. If I can't talk to anyone about games, at least I can talk to myself. But something funny happened recently. We were visiting with my family, and my youngest sister's husband was there. He does play games, but he's about a decade younger than me and in all the years that I've known him, I don't think we've ever been into the same game at the same time. Off the cuff, I asked, "have you played Elden Ring yet?" His eyes lit up. His smile widened. "Oh yeah," he said. He went on to tell me that he's never played a From Software game before and he's like twelve or fifteen hours in already, and has barely figured out what he's doing. He told me that it had taken him hours before he even figured out how to level. We then traded war stories and anecdotes, and it was awesome. He told me about being ripped apart by a bunch of wolves. I recommended that he look out for summon ashes. All I know is that in this day and age of Reddit and whatever – which I'm not a part of – this exchange took me back to a far more innocent time. It reminded me of the playground in elementary school and talking about secrets that we'd all discovered in the original Legend Of Zelda. Later on that same night, I combed through an IGN article on farming Runes and fought my way to the Bestial Sanctum so I could try my hand at sneaking up on humanoids that give out 1,000+ Runes each. They proved harder than I expected, but instead of giving up I started experimenting with new weapons, and then this became its own little mini-game to me. A place to hang out, and work on my skills and possibly level up quickly. As long as I have a clear goal in mind, each sitting with Elden Ring feels totally productive, even if in actuality I'm making the tiniest bit of progress as possible. I was able to spend time grinding near the Bestial Sanctum and then going off to explore other areas and then coming back to grind more, striking an excellent balance between just seeing things, and feeling like I'm being productive with leveling. It's a great feeling to return to my rune-farming spot and realize I'm way more powerful, and way more experienced as time goes on. And time goes on quickly in this one. Hours melt away, and I'm bummed when I have to call it a night. It's an honest to goodness breath of fresh air considering my previous experience with From Software titles. One weird thing that happened during my time playing was a rather large update patch to the game. The bigger things of note were some bug-fixes and expanded quests. But there were also rebalances to certain weapons and skills. This is the norm for online games – think Overwatch or whatever. But because I've treated Elden Ring like an entirely single-player affair up until this point, it was jarring. I say this because the patched nerfed the Hoarfrost Stomp by around 50% of its damage, and increased how long it took to cast. And I had spent the past few hours in the game finding an axe that had that ash attached to it, and leveling up enough to use it effectively. Anyone addicted to the game had read about Hoarfrost Stomp somewhere (for me it was Game Informer) because it was a widely known overpowered skill that could help you wreck some big bosses quickly. And yet the day after I finally obtained this thing... it was gone. Bummer. The weird thing was that once the whole idea of an "easy mode" was stripped away from me via patch, I realized that truly I was enjoying playing the game far more without it anyway. I mean, sure, I'd love to have a safety net load-out that I could just plow through the game with. But is that what the game is really about? Probably not. Although... I'd be lying if I said that wouldn't be fun for a noob like me. But still – I had been playing with this cool sword I found that allows you to strike pretty fast, and got accustomed to using a shield in my combat. So, whatever. And after about a dozen hours – which is lot for me and my current dad routine – I've decided I'm probably ready to take a bit of a break from Elden Ring. But honestly, twelve hours is only scraping the surface. I've not even tackled the first Legacy Dungeon yet. Though I have circumvented it and explored all kinds of stuff beyond it. But here's where the Breath Of The Wild comparison comes back into effect. See, I played Breath Of The Wild at launch for exactly twelve hours. I was enamored. And then, I found myself revisiting the game again between other games in 2017. And then I found myself revisiting it further year after year. I expect that to be exactly how I treat Elden Ring from here on out. I kind of hate comparing it to Breath Of The Wild, because it seems obvious and trite. But still. I can't help it. At this point, I genuinely think that Elden Ring is the better game. And I think it'll go into my pile of favorite open worlds along with the aforementioned Zelda title and Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto V, and so on. All of these games were ones that I stuck with for years, gradually exploring more over time and ultimately beating at some point. Or in the case of Breath Of The Wild (or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain), I've never beaten. But that's okay. They become comfort games that I can spend time with in bits over years and feel fine with never seeing the end because – well, why would I want such an amazing game to end anyway? Of course, my so-called hiatus from the game lasted about a week or so. I realized I was cursed because I hugged that spirit in the Roundtable Hold and rectified that. I found a few caves and cleared them out. Found some new spirit summons. I bought a bow so that I have some ranged attacks. Then I stumbled upon a sleeping (or dying?) dragon and ruthlessly killed him for 75,000 runes and then leveled up a bunch to LVL 40. I killed that ghostly riverman in the lake and felt like a boss. Elden Ring is a special sort of game. Progress comes slow, sure. But it is so immensely gratifying. I honestly see a pattern developing here where I play the game for a week or so, then play something else and then return to this again. Like I said, that's much the way I treated Breath Of The Wild for the years following its release. And this, well, I can't help but feel is probably the better and more perfected game. What really blows my mind about Elden Ring is that this is a game released in 2022. Which means that I've been playing games for like 35 years now. It's insane to me to even think that a game can come out that impresses me this much. I mean, don't get me wrong - I find games I love all that time. But my point is, it's very rare that I get a game that makes me feel the same thrill and joy that I had playing Super Mario Bros for the first time, or Tetris for the first time, or Super Mario World World or Sonic The Hedgehog for the first time. Elden Ring is one of those rare games. It is an important game. It's a defining game. I think about it all the time when I'm not gaming. I spend time researching things and making little notes about what I plan to do next or what I should be exploring. I love so many games, but very few do that to me. Very few. I had unlocked a fair amount of the map before I finally decided I was brave enough to even take on the first real boss of the game. I was level 42 I believe. I was rocking a katana with bleed that I had also added Hoarfrost Stomp to. I brought along my jellyfish spirit, and summoned an AI helper. On my first attempt, I whittled him down to maybe a fifth of his health or so. I felt really good about that. I then banged my head against the wall while attempting to defeat him a few more times. So I went off and did something else. Again, the Dark Souls games have long been games that I gave up on after a couple of hours. But here we are. I'm now twenty-something hours into Elden Ring and just completely obsessed. I'd also say at this point that Elden Ring is probably the most difficult game I've ever stuck with this long. I mean, sure you can say that stuff like Spelunky or Slay The Spire are difficult games, but in a different way. I've beaten both (multiple times), but they seem to take a different kind of patience and tenacity. From Software titles are usually ones where I can't wrap my head around most of the systems and just bail. But Elden Ring is a truly different beast. I was about 27 hours in when I finally tackled Margit The Fell Omen, who is basically the first "real" boss in the game. I mean, that's kind of absurd. He's accessible within the first hour of the game. Maybe the first thirty minutes. But it took me a long time to find the courage to actually give him a go. And then it took me probably upwards of ten attempts to figure him out and take him down. That victory was certainly sweet, though. I tried all kinds of things - mostly using my jellyfish as a decoy while I laid on Hoarfrost Stomp. Eventually I started to see the patterns in his attacks, and my victory only came when I stepped up and decided that I'd just get up close, and actually block, dodge, and hack the hell out of him. I cannot tell you how triumphant I felt to watch him go down. My heart was beating and I felt like I wanted to shout my victory from the mountaintops. And again, he's an "early" boss. But the game is just that intense. Back in 2018, Starlink: Battle For Atlas was released. I remember going to pick it up at Best Buy with glee. Even though I wasn't really interested in the whole toys-to-life aspect of it - a gaming fad that was already on its way out at the time - there was something about Starlink that was intriguing to me. Basically, Ubisoft was making their own open-world Star Fox game. The angle was even more obvious when it was announced that the Switch version would feature Fox McCloud himself in the campaign, and basically WAS a new Starfox game in everything but name. The Switch starter set even came with a plastic Arwing.
Starlink itself was... fine. The actual space combat itself was actually pretty cool, but the game was bogged down by planetary exploration and stupid fetch quests. It seemed like Starlink was trying to be too many things to too many people (Star Fox, toys-to-life, No Man's Sky lite, etc) and because of that it failed in many ways. It wasn't a bad game, but it struggled to find an identity when in reality all it had to be was a really big version of Star Fox. So why am I talking about all this? Because I've stumbled upon the game that I wished that Starlink was three years ago. Chorvs (or "Chorus," really) is a game that really went under the radar. At least for me. I feel like I remember seeing vague previews of it back before it was released, but somehow I missed that it came out at the end of 2021. Flipping through a recent Game Informer issue I was reminded of Chorvs and checked Amazon to see that apparently the print run was fairly low because they had only one copy left. Luckily for me it was cheap, and I was sitting on some Amazon gift cards post-birthday. What I'm really enjoying about Chorvs is that the flying and combat is very arcade feeling. This is definitely a niche genre to begin with. And finding space games like this that aren't hardcore sims is even more difficult. But the action here is fast paced and awesome. There's been some truly thrilling battles for me - ones that leave my heart pumping. And that's great. Although I will say that I'm pretty terrible at drifting which is rough. But once I unlocked the skill that lets you teleport BEHIND enemies - well, the combat really started to feel incredible. You definitely have to pay your dues early on. You have limited weapons and limited skills. But as you play and unlock a bigger arsenal with more tricks up your sleeve, things start to get pretty incredible. And while the grim-dark story can be full of moments of technobabble, it does fit the tone of the game overall. To put it more concisely, you actually pilot a sentient ship named Forsaken, and none of this feels goofy. I will say that while the controls are rather streamlined to a certain extent, this game plays like an action RPG in space. There's a lot of mechanics to wrap your head around in battle - and pull off rather flawlessly. When you do this correctly, you feel like a gamer god. When you fail, it's as if you've never played a game at all. I got stuck in a pretty intense battle with a shielded enemy and I just couldn't seem to get my fingers to do what my brain wanted them to. I understood what I needed to do, but I just couldn't do it. I knew I needed to keep warping behind him to avoid his huge shield and evade his deadly blasts. But my reflexes just weren't there. This is where the arcade aspect comes in. And maybe an arcade style shooter like this is a young man's game. And I'm too middle-aged and rusty to get it right, I don't know. I took a little break from Chorvs to play something else and take a breather. It turns out that this was a mistake. Coming back to the game just left me feeling more disoriented. I was trying to acclimate myself to the controls and I was just straight floundering. It's a bit of a bummer to me, because there's a lot to like about Chorvs, but I feel a sort of fish-out-of-water vibe here. I suspect that if you've played a lot of space shooters then you should do just fine. But if you're a casual acquaintance of the genre (like me), then you're going to find this one pretty damn tough to keep up with. Not that it's Dark Souls In Space, but still. Never did I ever think I'd write about a Peppa Pig video game. In fact, four years ago, I don't think I was even really aware of Peppa Pig. But my daughter is obsessed with her. And has been since she was two. The past two Christmases and birthdays have been filled with Peppa related items. Last month, when my daughter turned four, our house was filled with Peppa balloons, plates, cups, a cake, and so on. My wife and I often keep an eye out for figures that our collection might be missing. We've sat through so many episodes that we even have our own favorites. When it rains, we have to argue about the merits of jumping up and down in muddy puddles. It's a serious phenomenon.
Today was Father's Day, 2023. The day started with my little one climbing in my bed and playing her tablet next to me as I drifted in and out of sleep. I asked her to wake me up when it was time to get ready for gym class, and she did. We got ready and I poured some coffee in a travel mug. Gym class has been my routine with her for at least six months now. Every Sunday morning. It's a cool routine. It's my chance to watch her grow and gain new skills. After that, we went to Starbucks and split a ham and cheese croissant and a bacon, egg and gouda sandwich and then browsed Target for a while. I always need to check the electronics section and she always asks to play with the Switch kiosk. It's funny: Although I'm a lifelong gamer, I never push my gaming on her. She has her own little Kindle tablet that she plays kids games on. But last month she wanted to play with my tablet and somehow that got me bringing up random games for her to try. She got sucked into Wonder Boy, which is honestly too advanced for her. But I loved her dedication to trying the same minute or so of the opening level over and over again. Ever since, she keeps talking about Wonder Boy the same way I talked about Mario as a kid, and I can't help but think that's adorable. Today in Target I watched her try with all her might to get through a Kirby demo of some sort. It was slow and methodical, but she seemed to get the gist of it. So when we got home to a rainy Sunday and no chance of cooking out and playing in the yard, I figured maybe today was the day to finally give her actual access to a console. I asked her if she wanted to play a Peppa Pig game on the TV and she gave me the most serious and solemn "yes" I have ever heard. I installed the game and handed her a controller and gave no direction. And what I saw blew my mind. I watched as my daughter took in-game direction and created a character. And then she was off into an open world that just lets you do whatever. It was a really neat experience just sitting and watching her play for an hour. First she went to Peppa's house and played with some toys. Then they left and jumped in a muddy puddle. Then they walked to Grandpa Pig's house and hopped in his car and explored a rocky beach. She scored me an achievement when she went rummaging for sea life. Then she walked further down the beach and buried Daddy Pig in the sand. Then she went swimming. Then she went swimming like ten more times. She laughed like a troll as she did it over and over again, forcing Mommy Pig to replay her same dialogue. She snickered that Mommy Pig must be getting tired of saying the same thing again. It was pretty funny. She went and got ice cream with the rest of the family and visited a tower where she could look through a telescope. She explored the town and suddenly got tired. But it was a perfect intro to gaming. There was no threat, no need for dexterity. It was just an open world that she already loved, ready to explore. And the presentation was great, as if we were watching one long episode that we could control the outcome of. I never touched the controller once. And yet, it felt like a truly monumental moment in my own gaming life. I was just sitting and watching and sharing the hobby that I've adored since I was not much older than her. Inscryption is an incredibly deceptive game. To oversimplify, it's a card game. Which is cool with me as I've always loved card games. Heck, Slay The Spire was my most played game of 2023, with like 117 hours put in this year. And that's a game I've been playing for years. But calling Inscryption "a card game," truly is an oversimplification, because honestly, it is one of the more bizarre games I've ever played.
When you first fire the game up, you're presented with a title screen that resembles an old computer game. I'm talking Commodore 64 or maybe Apple II or something. The option for a new game is grayed out, so all you can do is continue. So then you start the actual card game which looks more like a gritty PS1 game. The game itself plays not unlike Slay The Spire. Except most modern card games explain everything to you. Inscryption explains nothing. And part of what makes it so gripping is that you play by learning. There's so much trial and error. What cards are good, what do Sigils do, what is anything in this game all comes down to putting the time in (or googling, I suppose). I could write a thousand words and have trouble summing much of it up. You use Squirrel cards as free sacrifices. You need to pick between Squirrel cards and your deck proper. At certain points you can risk putting your cards next to a fire to up their stats, or possibly have them eaten by starving travelers. Other times you can sacrifice a card permanently to add its Sigil to another card. You can trade furs. You can make weird figurines that augment your run. You can pull out your own tooth or gauge out an eye to hail-mary. In other words, this is a grotesque card game. Also, you play against a sort of dungeon master who sits across the table from you and dons unsettling masks to take on the roles of other characters. And when you lose, he takes pictures of you. It's completely weird. Weirder still, some of your cards talk to you. And they begin to give you hints on how to beat the bigger game. The bigger game is actually getting up from the table and exploring the cabin that you're trapped in to find a way out. All while playing a card game. In this sense, Inscryption feels like a mash-up of card game and escape room. One of the more unique mechanics is the Death Card. Every run, when you die you get to create a new card based on cards you've picked up. You choose a Cost, Power, Health and Sigil and then name it. And later on, you can actually draw the card that you created. This adds some incredible depth. As a card game, Inscryption is nowhere near as engaging as Slay The Spire (or Hearthstone, Marvel Snap, etc), but as an experience it's really hard to describe. It's a card game, but it isn't. More, the card game is just a skeleton that the actual game hangs on. It's interesting and creepy and completely worth checking out. Phoenix Point was one of my most anticipated games of 2021. It's also one of the most frustrating games that I've played this year.
If you're not aware of this one, Phoenix Point is a spiritual successor to XCOM. Developed by Julian Gallop - creator of the original X-COM games - this is basically Gallop's own attempt to make his own new XCOM. There's a whole lot of reasons to be excited about this. Especially if you're a guy like me who discovered Terror From The Deep at a young age, and fell in love with the turn based strategy genre because of it. And definitely if you're a guy like me who spent hundreds of hours playing Enemy Unknown, Enemy Within, XCOM 2, and War Of The Chosen. The truth is, I wasn't expecting XCOM 3, here. I know that Gallop's studio doesn't have the resources of 2K. But still. For every good idea that's brought into the fold here, there seems to be some other frustrating that negates it. On the upside, the bones of the game are certainly good. There's definitely a decent game hiding here. But what bugs me is that this has existed on PC for several years now. It's had time to cook. It's had time to work the bugs out. Heck, there's even a bunch of DLC included here. I didn't play it on PC, though. I for sure don't have a capable PC to play it on. But I had to think that when it finally reached Xbox, it'd be ready to make a splash. Not the case. Not by a long shot. But wait - I'm sorry - I meant to focus on the good first. The good is that the story is cool. The whole pandora pandemic thing? Timely anyway. And the vaguely oceanic aliens? Pretty awesome. And the branching story and factions? I can dig that as a fan of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The problems, though... the problems are all seemingly technical. There are so many issues here that impede my enjoyment of actually playing the game. First of all the loading times are just embarrassing. The game loads before and after each mission, and these loading times can stretch into several minutes. Like, legit get up and go get a drink and come back and still wait. It's baffling. It feels like the least optimized game I've ever played on Xbox. Granted, I don't have a Series X (yet) and maybe that would fix it. But in a world of chip shortages, I'm far from alone trying to play this game on an Xbox One. So this is just not a good look. The controls and UI are also an issue. Not so much in-mission. But on the Geoscape I'm constantly getting mixed up on what buttons do what and how to access what menu. And sometimes button presses don't register, making feel like the game is struggling to keep up with each menu change. It makes EVERYTHING feel like a chore. Add to all that the random crashes. Yup. Those exist in a commercial Xbox One game in 2021. I can't tell you the fury I've felt having a mission take minutes to load, then only minutes to play, then minutes more to load only to see the game crash and my progress get wiped. This should not be a thing. And THEN there's the unintuitive UI. My goodness. As said, I've spent hundreds of hours across the XCOM games. So why is it that after spending 15 minutes I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get certain recruits to get on one of my ships? So I'm at a point where I don't even know how to send them on a mission I want to send them on? And how do I intercept this big flying creature? I can click on him. I can send a ship in his path? How do I interact with him? Nothing seems obvious here. It's a lot of work - again - when things take so long to load. I'm just really disappointed in this one. Even if it had been a pretty competently performing XCOM clone, I'd feel like it was a successful side entry. Instead, it feels undercooked after YEARS of me hyping it up in my head. Bummer. It's no secret that I'm a sucker for these kinds of city-building strategy games. Or however you want to define them. I absolutely adored Cities Skylines. I played a ton of Planet Coaster. I just really get hooked on these kinds of games.
After reading some solid reviews of Islanders, I couldn't resist downloading it for $5. But after a week or so of playing, I couldn't shake the feeling that this felt like a mobile game I just happened to be playing on console. Now that's not a knock, exactly. Earlier this year I played Mini Metro for many hours. And I thought it was great. That game was sort of the epitome of mobile-game-on-console. But it was really, really good. Meanwhile, Islanders felt pretty shallow to me. Whereas Mini Metro took the concept of a huge time-sink like Railroad Tycoon and condensed into a satisfying arcade experience, Islanders fails big time. Mini Metro tasked you with starting small and building outward until your train system just couldn't keep up. Islanders on the other hand gives you small goals to achieve, AND the ability to outgrow your island, thus starting with a clean slate. This sort of breaks the experience for me. I'm not asked to think all that far ahead, because I know that eventually I'll be able to ditch the island I've congested and have a fresh start on a new island. So it becomes a game of just kind of doing good-enough, which doesn't really suck me in. It's certainly possible that I'd enjoy this game more if I hadn't already played better alternatives. But there's the above-mentioned lack of complexity, along with the fact that the game really doesn't feel all that great to play with a controller. Everything feels really imprecise. It's an odd example where touch controls would truly benefit the experience - made even more glaring when I'm playing it on a tablet via Remote Play. I will say that the audio is surprisingly good. There's some great atmosphere that comes through with the birds chirping and the low key music. Though, it does - once again - make me think of the soothing white noise that your citizens make in Cities Skylines. So once more, I'm left thinking about another, better game. I'm a huge fan of the Alien franchise. And there's a new Aliens game. So here we are. I've been playing Aliens: Fireteam Elite all week and I have a lot of thoughts on it. It's not really a good game, honestly. But I have a lot of thoughts.
As a total Alien geek, there was zero chance that I wanted to miss out on this one. The last proper game in the series was Alien Isolation which is a bonafide masterpiece. That game completely nails the vibe of the first film. It's about one xenomorph. One unstoppable and perfect killing machine. It's a horrifying experience. For some strange reason, Fireteam Elite is basically a sequel to Colonial Marines. They're just not going to tell you that because Colonial Marines is a game that lives in infamy. In fairness, I think Colonial Marines is a way better game than it's given credit for. I mean, it was linear. It treated Xenomorphs like popcorn. It was glitchy as hell. But overall, it was a fun experience. Fireteam Elite I can't really say the same about. Oddly, all the complaints about Colonial Marines apply here. It's as if the developer took nothing from Isolation. It's super linear. Like, it's just "hey, here's a waypoint. Get there. Hold ground. Repeat." And Xenos - my goodness, they are in constant supply. It's wave after wave of shooting these bug-like enemies. This could be any other horde based shooter, be it Left 4 Dead or Killing Floor. It doesn't really matter. They just landed on this license. There's very little story here. And actually you're just doing a mission then returning to the hub base to up your weapons and perks and cosmetics and going on to the next. It's just a weird setup for an Alien game. One good thing I'll say as that the settings are legit. I really appreciate the atmosphere and the fan-service of throwing in things from Covenant and Prometheus. I'm one of those obsessives who actually really likes those recent movies. Like, I'll argue that Prometheus is actually one of the top tier Alien movies. So I dig this. And it's one of the only things keeping me interested. But the biggest hang-up for me about Fireteam Elite is the base of the game itself. This is meant to be played in co-op. More importantly 3-player squads. I have to think that if I had two friends as into Alien as I am, and more importantly friends who could share the same open windows of time to play as I do - then this game would be way better. But I don't. As a solely single player experience, Fireteam Elite is severely lacking. You're given two faceless/nameless squad-mates. (They're actually just labelled as Alpha and Beta - my gawd). And they're dumb as rocks. They shoot stuff - mostly. But overall they're just there. There's no tactics to speak of. They don't heal you or strategize in any way. They sometimes get you up, slowly, if need be. This game just feels like kind of a mess. I think it could be good, but not for me. And bear in mind that I'm a huge Alien apologist. I'll go to bat for the Alien franchise all day. I celebrate 4/26. I had to own this game. I'm glad I played it. But... it's just not very good, at least for a solo player. The original Puyo Puyo Tetris (2014) was a pretty big deal for me. Of course I didn't play it until 2017 when it was finally localized. Why it took three years to make its way to the west, I'll never understand. It would seem pretty low risk for Sega to put out anything bearing the Tetris name. People love Tetris, right? I know I do.
I also love Puyo Puyo. I mean, not nearly as much as I love Tetris. But I've played probably every entry in the Puyo Puyo series over the years. I remember importing Saturn and Dreamcast entries back in the day. So what is Puyo Puyo Tetris? Well, it's sort of obvious. It's a mash-up of those two very different, very popular puzzle games. The crux is you can play competitively either Puyo Puyo or Tetris. Sometimes you switch between both. And either game can send garbage blocks to the other player. It's a pretty awesome idea. Say you're really good at Puyo Puyo and your friend is really good at Tetris - you can still battle each other on level ground. I played through the original Puyo Puyo Tetris story mode and had a good time. But I'm being honest, after that the game just became an easy way for me to access vanilla Tetris. Mostly I'd just play marathon mode and that was fine because it was a good version of Tetris. So what is this sequel then? Well, it's mostly more of same. It doesn't feel like a huge improvement or step up or anything. It's basically the first game but expanded a bit. There's a new and bigger story mode. But who really cares? The story is dumb and I skip all the cutscenes. It eventually gets challenging, but again, it's nothing new if you've played the original game. I'm okay at Puyo Puyo, but I definitely prefer Tetris. I quit the story mode about halfway through because I got sick of these new skill mode matches. Basically, you build up skills you can implement and it feels superfluous to me. Maybe it's an interesting mechanic, but it doesn't do much for me. The idea is that you're adding different offenses and defenses on the fly. But that just strips away some of the purity of these games to me. I fired up a Tetris marathon, got 344 lines and called it quits. To be honest, Puyo Puyo Tetris was great back in 2017 because it was the easiest way for me to play Tetris on modern hardware. But now as I write this in 2024, I've got Tetris Effect which is just so much better, so I guess Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 just feels too slight by comparison if you're mostly tuning in for the Tetris half of the equation. I guess in fairness the pure Puyo Puyo marathon mode would also be the easiest and purest way to play Puyo Puyo on modern hardware. But there are still plenty of other options for Puyo Puyo fans and most of them have more options, so shrug. This is fine but hardly necessary. |
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