by tom_omb
Game of the Year: Holiday Specialtacular 2017: HitsmasLast year's journal was a lot of fun to do, so I'm going to keep it up. I hope to look back and see this record of my thought process and I'll see how it's evolved over the years. A feeling I'm sure people know that have kept some kind of written journal in their past. The closest thing I've ever had is my old sketch books.
My game goals going into 2019:
Play Return of the Obra Dinn! It was at the top of my list last year, and the game of the year talk I've heard these past few weeks have only reinforced that it's a game I must play. I'll keep my eyes on a Hitman 1 and 2 bundle and Chuchel in the coming year.
Red Dead Redemption II is a game where I was trudging through the snow, long after I got off that mountain. I'm not talking about walking speed. I was literally and figuratively knocked off of that horse over and over again. I got back on, only to find I lost my hides when I returned to the trapper to sell them. I've made it so far, I think it should be the first Rockstar game that I see the story through to the end.
I'm also a new owner of a PlayStation VR headset and I look forward to whatever experiences I have with it in the future. So far I've played around with some 360 video apps and played the Battlefront X-wing experience. As cool as it was sitting in an X-wing's cockpit, it didn't earn a journal entry last year. I hope I didn't spoil myself by with starting with Astro Bot and Moss. Surely we'll see more great VR games released in 2019. I know I'm not the only one who got a PSVR last Christmas.
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January 1 This might be a Hitman 1 level, but I played it through the Hitman 2 launcher. As far as I'm concerned they are the same game, I'd like to play it all from the start in the Hitman 2 wrapper. I dabbled with the free Christmas Paris mission today. Still getting a feel for how to approach this game. I want to play it as proficiently as I see the Bomb Crew on the Hitsmas feature, but it requires a level knowledge and experience I don't have as a beginner. I spent some time in the menus and died a handful of times exploring. Hopefully I'll come back to it before it expires in a couple days. (EDIT: I didn't >.<)
January 6-26 Lately I've been reading the Zelda Encyclopedia. While I find it stretches the mythology of Zelda farther than the developers care about it is a neat look at how the games have changed over the decades. It's been feeding my chronic nagging desire to 100% every Zelda game. Phantom Hourglass is near the top of that list, since I never completed it. So I dusted off 3DS and brought it to work. A system I have purchased 9 Zelda games for. My first impression is that it's a lot more talky then a remember. Something that bothered me about Okami when I played it last year. Probably a trend of an era when games were trying to develop stories before voice acting was widespread. It doesn't age well, there's since been a backlash against this type of story telling. I feel like I'm reading more than playing. People think Navi's bad, there's a fairy in this game that redundantly narrates everything: Cutscene opening the door to the first dungeon, followed by: "Now you can enter the Temple! We did it Link! Let's go face up to that power of darkness!" Just inside that door there's fire: "Ugh...So Hot... Oh, no! There are flames everywhere! You better not touch them... Don't go and burn yourself Link!" The touchscreen controls work really well, I could see something similar working on a mobile Zelda. I love drawing on my map, a feature that should have been in Breath of the Wild. I got my first taste of the timed dungeon that you return to througout the game. I recall quitting my original playthough because it gets tricky later in the game. We'll see how I do this time. February 3 Despite my early complaints I mostly enjoyed my time with this game. It's full of clever puzzles that make use of the DS's unique features. Taking better handwritten map notes made the repeat visits to the timed dungeon manageable and satisfying. I also took careful notes of every chest I found to do my best at a completionist run. Unfortunately there's far too much tedious randomness to make it worthwhile to collect the final heart and all the ship parts. The heart is the most frustrating for me. It requires waiting forever for the right kind of fish shadow to appear on the map, then you get a CHANCE at finding the needed fish, PLUS they are much harder to reel in. I found 2 and failed both times over hours of play time. I beat the final boss and that's what matters.
January 7 I bought this weeks before I got a PSVR because it was on sale for $5. Psychonauts 2 is my most anticipated game of 2019, so this was one of the top VR games I wanted to try. Not many developers are as dedicated to humor, expressive cartoon art, and inventive concepts like Double Fine are. The idea of hopping between brains is the perfect melding of VR and Psychonauts. To explore the world you swap perspectives with familiar characters from the first game, dimwitted labratory workers, and many animals. While it's relatively brief, there's a lot of environments from a hidden laboratory torture chamber to a wrecked deep sea school bus. It feels very much like Tim Schafer's point and click adventure games I fell in love with years ago from LucasArts. Only you look with your head and can use and array of physic abilities to interact with the world. The puzzles are simple, I got stuck only once, and that was my fault. I placed a key item out of sight and forgot about it. If you're a fan of Tin Schefer's style of humor and the absurd world of Psychonauts, as I am, you'll get a fun couple hours out of Rhombus of Ruin.
PlayStation VR Demos January 7 Playing through the Playstation VR Demo Disk 2.0 that came with my headset gave be a better idea of the variety of VR games out there. Thumper looks rad, I already knew that, but it's especially cool in VR. I'm very bad and rhythm games and tend to avoid them. Playing through the first level I did manage to get in the zone breifly when I felt my hits align with the music. This demo helped me to understand the appeal of this genre. I really like the concept of putting a boss at the end of the highway, successfully timed hits are attacks and misses damage your space beetle. Still, I'm not convinced I won't fall apart when the game gets harder. Glad I played this demo, though. The first few times I tried Eve: Valkyrie it placed me in the backseat of the fighter. Until I figured out you need to hold options to recalibrate the camera. Seemed like a better executed take on the Battlefield X-wing VR exerience I tried, but the demo was so short, I didn't get much of a feel for it. Star Child was beautiful, but also ended abruptly. Tiny Trax seemed like a slightly better implementation of one of the worst stars in Mario Odyssey. Battlezone's tank controlled well, but there doesn't seem to be much else to it. Rez Infinite had a neat look, but I'm not sure I need to see more of it. The Persistence didn't hook me. The rest required PlayStation move to play. I'm tempted to get them just for job simulator. I also played a Tumble VR demo and it was my favorite I tried today. I loved playing with wooden blocks as a kid. This game is about stacking them, blowing up towers and puzzles. There are blocks made of different materials that behave differently. It was fun figuring out how to efficiently blow a tower and make the pieces fly as far as possible, there's more strategy than it sounds like.
January 27 I have a long history with this game. My earliest memories include playing both NES Zelda games at friends' houses and never really understood them. I didn't become a Zelda fan until OoT and owned versions of the NES games on GameCube, NES, and Wii U, but never made much of a dent in them. I only beat Zelda 1 recently, in the months anticipating BotW in 2017. My recent triumphs with Mario Bros 3 and Phantom Hourglass have inspired be to give it my all now that it's on The Switch. I can tell this will be the hardest challenge yet. The Switch's suspend point feature won't be as helpful as it was with a straight forward game like Mario. It's very much a rogue like, after my 3 lives are spent I have to start from the beginning, keeping my items, but loosing all the XP collected. The primitive enemy AI isn't very forgiving and I have to play very well, or get lucky, to avoid taking too many hits. After playing for my first day I discovered the random battles get much more brutal after exiting the cave on the way to the second dungeon. I have the candle, the glove, and figured out how to use magic, but I still have a long way to go. February 22 Welp, I defeated Dark Link and got a Triforce! It took beating 6 of the 7 dungeons without the healing spell I should got early on. Then replaying two of those dungeons. One, I accidentally overwrote my save. The other I beat the boss before getting the item. I also had to play the last dungeon twice (burned the extra life on the first run) because I didn't have enough magic power to beat the second last boss. But after farming 5 levels I came back and I saw the credits! Enough complaining. It may not have aged well, but I can see the early DNA of the series here. This is first time we see towns, each the namesake of future Zelda characters. Clues from townsfolk, while often obtuse, build on the blind searching from most of the first game. The items obtained in each dungeon that unlock areas of the world are a step towards the multi-use items we know from Link to the Past that went on to define the series. Zelda 1 had some of that, but the more complex overworld here feels more modern. Up and Downward thrusts improve combat a lot from the basic attack. Even if an enemy is immune it can be useful to hop on and over it. I'm glad I finally illuminated my biggest blind spot from my favorite game series. It feels like a real accomplishment scratching it off my list. I'm amazed at anyone who beat this on an NES without suspend points.
February 1-2 I'd been looking for some move controllers to compliment my PSVR headset for a little while. Finally found some and decided A Fisherman's Tale would be the first game to try them out with. Recently the GBEast crew took a rather lengthy look and I was impressed. Unfortunately I already knew how to solve the puzzles for half of this short game thanks to that preview. I love the story and characters of this game where you solve puzzles by placing or removing items in rooms that feature small model of your home. As you simultaneously play as a large or small version of yourself and these items that retain their relative size. I think there's a solid core to this charming game, but it could have used some more polish. Perhaps turning off collision on objects I'm currently holding would have prevented many moments of frustration. Particularly on a late chapter that confusingly changes the rules of the game. I'm not sure if I solved the puzzle correctly or found a buggy exploit.
February 3-7 A short story, but it satisfies the "I am Batman" fantasy pretty well. Collecting all the Riddler and PSN trophies made it worth the money for me. But, boy, you could tell this was early VR. The calibration recommends you stand and was so highly specific I had to flip over my couch to make room. Because of the standing I got VR motion sick for my first time due to my head darting around looking for secrets. Sitting in my swivel chair and actually moving my body as I look is the preferred method. It's no exaggeration to say the target practice with the move controller is some of the sloppiest gameplay I've had the displeasure of experiencing. The terrible auto aim would seek out the wrong targets from across the entire play area, despite looking like it was on track for the correct target for a few seconds. Other times I'd send a barrage of batarangs at my target, narrowly missing nearly a dozen times in a row! Sloppy controls aside, I love Rocksteady's environmental puzzle design. They've taken that spirit of from mainline series and translated it in this light game focused on the world and puzzles.
February 7 - 19 There's been a lot of love for the Resident Evil series in the air lately. The RE2 remake is hot right now. I fell off the remake for the first again game just a few months ago. I spotted RE7 on sale, the more appealing option than the returning to RE1. I've heard enough praise about RE7 since release to put it on my radar. I didn't recall it being as well received at release. It feels very much like a modern take on Resident Evil 1. It propels you forward at a much faster clip. Checkpoints and no restrictions on the number of saves makes it much friendlier. Yet ammo scarcity and tough enemies still make it feel like a survival horror. Zombies are now swamp things and the big bads have personality. You will explore and backtrack throughout a greater variety of environments, but it all takes place in one isolated area. Running and hiding from the terrifying, invulnerable family members works well in the world. Only, there's one boss fight in I had a lot of trouble with. I didn't feel like had a grip on fighting "Daddy" in a closed area in a first person game. If I turned and ran he was so fast it felt like he magnetized directly behind me. Not so much in an effectively scary way, it just felt kinda buggy and frustrating. His openings felt tiny and unclear after supposedly stunning him. Thankfully each encounter was very different and I never had too much of a problem outside of that fight. My favorite parts of the game were a handful of escape room style puzzle scenarios. The DLC expands these by reusing environments from the main story. Creative puzzles presented with the same cinematic flair of the main game. Sometimes there were multiple ways they could be solved.
February 23 - March 8 The final NES Mario I needed to complete. I've been knocking out these lifelong regrets left and right thanks to NES online. A few stages in I realized I haven't seen most of this game, unlike the other two. The rules are so different in this game. Mario's thing is jumping on fools to take them out! Not riding them, picking them up and throwing them. I should note that I played the whole thing as Toad. Out of tradition, but also because Luigi and the Princess have jumps that I always found hard to control. While not as inventive and varied as Mario 3, I was surprised by the clever implementations of this game's unique mechanic. Like riding enemies across obstacles and I never knew there were so many ways to kill a Birdo (Ostro according to the credits.)
March 9-14 I would have finished this game sooner, but I've been busy moving lately. I'm proud to say I've set up all my old consoles that were in storage before, but I haven't had much time to play games. The art in Old Man's Journey is what stood out when deciding to buy something new on my Switch. It's the strongest element of this game. It's minimal story is told entirely through beautiful animated vignettes that are the reward for completing each leg of the journey. The puzzles were also very simple. It's not particularly difficult, but I found it could be frustrating. Moving hillsides to navigate the world is a novel idea, but I wish it communicated better how far a hill could move. It's also a one button game too often the character would move when I wanted to interact with the world. At the end of the day these problems were minor. This is a game about enjoying the calm scenery while an old man quietly reflects on the life he lived.