by tom_omb
A new year has begun and I've put World of Warcraft and Animal Crossing down for now. I look forward to playing new games that aren't going to occupy months of my time.
My first priority is to get my one dollar's worth from my Xbox Gamepass trial. The backlog is stocked with some fresh games I picked up for free or on sale over Christmas. Including Disco Elysium and Death Stranding. Hades, Ghost of Tsushima, and Immortals Fenyx Rising are a few of the 2020 games I missed that remain on my radar.
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December 31 2020 - It took until 2022 to finally write this first entry of 2021's journal. I was pretty good for the first half of the year exercising with Ring Fit fairly regularly. I wanted to finish the adventure mode and see how (or if) I would implement a routine post game. I never made it that far, there are many more worlds in this game than I expected. As an exercise experience I found it otherwise effective. I would work up a sweat, feel my muscles burn and get my heart rate up on the best days. The game provides instructions on a wide variety of real exercises. It works well most of the time, but I was never sure if I was performing the more advanced exercises properly without in person guidance. The motion sensor sometimes gave me frustrating feedback. Like when it tries to be encouraging by saying "perfect!" followed, confusingly on the same rep, "a little further." The game portion has a cheesy story with characters that range from charming to obnoxious. It that mixes things up with enough of a variety of activities, items and abilities to keep things interesting enough to keep motivated. Next I pledge to return to my Ring Fit routine in 2022.
January 6 - January 15 If I played Spiritfarer days sooner it would have been in contention for a top spot on my game of the year 2020 list. This is a game about caring for others as you guide them to the afterlife. My Grandmother died in December and I thought this game could aid me in mourning. It's a farming game that is equally an item gated exploration adventure. There's no greater motivator than uncovering the secrets hidden in the darkness past the edges of your map. Everything you do in this game is in service to the cast of characters traveling on your boat. Build them each custom homes and comically rebuild your boat until it's bonkers huge just to accommodate them. Feed them like they are toddlers, they would rather starve than go to the kitchen, and they can be picky. They each have distinct personalities, perspectives and philosophies. Some of my favorites were the dungeon master, you collect his role playing party, or the art snob that hates art snobs. The one that reminded me most of my Gramma, in her later years, was an elderly sheep that needed help walking. Or the joyous frog that's greatest wish is to host a family dinner. Farming and crafting isn't exactly tedious like in other games of this type. It can be stressful as you try keep plates spinning. Insuring my garden is productive, setting my course and smelting ore while food is cooking before I arrive at my destination. It perfectly describes Stella (the player character) as a people pleaser who will do anything for her family with no thought for herself. That's the kind of person my Grandma was.
January 15 Continuing my $1 trial of Xbox Gamepass after Spiritfarer I took a day searching for the next game to play. First was Burnout Paradise. I'm not normally into car games, but I've been curious about this one for a while. I was intrigued by an arcadey open world game that encouraged crashing. I had some fun fining collectable smashables like yellow gates and red billboards. From the street I suddenly found myself in a motorbike select screen, not sure how. I had an okay time driving really fast on the highway out side of town on my bike. It was way too easy to crash and the gates and billboards were gone now. I tried for some time to find a garage where I could change cars. The map screen wasn't very useful and I eventually just gave up on the game. I wasn't particularly enjoying the races and stunt events, but I may have gotten the hang of them in time if I wasn't so annoyed by the UI.
January 15 I played the "ready to play" demo version of Anthem and deleted it before it was fully installed. I just wanted to take a peak at this notorious game before it gets rebooted. What little I played wasn't half bad. A big budget third person rpg shooter with a double jump felt cool and flying is a neat mechanic. I was already starting to get sick of guard the thing objectives. I knew it was time to leave when at the end of the mission they presented a dozen guns for me to scrap.
January 15 I was looking forward to playing The Long Dark after watching the intro (before installing the second half of the game) and learning it was made here in Vancouver. The art style has a cool painterly look. I knew it was a survival game, but it seemed like the story mode may have echoes of Firewatch. It was a struggle to survive from minute one, after the plane crash, in a way that I can't imagine could have been by design. The UI was challenging to navigate with more complex to crafting than other games of this type I've played. With very little to no tutorial I eventually learned after many deaths how to light a fire, boil water, stun a rodent with a rock (just barely) and cook it. The entire time I was never able to get my vitals to a moderate level to advance very far. Fire didn't warm me fast enough, my fire burnt out if I cooked, eating hardly satisfied my hunger and I'd run out of resources and die. After a couple hours endless frustration I had enough.
January 16 - 19 The vast majority of my Tetris playing has been on my Original Gameboy. Where there was one game mode (if you didn't have a link cable and another Gameboy) with two songs and it didn't save your high scores if you turned it off. Tetris Effect is a beautiful new way to play Tetris. The music and visuals are an excellent enhancement to the classic game. I got about a 1/3 of the way through the Journey mode before I had to knock the difficulty down from normal to easy. Whenever it reached speed 9 or higher I could barely hold on. It was shear luck if I could get through or not. Even on easy it's not shy with the high speeds. It was fun to play around with the alternate ways to play Tetris. Goals, combos, holds, quick drops, so much here is new to me. My favorites were the relaxing modes that never reached high speeds. It's a shame I played this on Xbox Gamepass becuase I would like to try it on my PlayStation VR. Otherwise I'm satisfied with my short time I've had with this game, but I may return for a quick match or two in the future.
January 18 - 29 My first impression of Supraland was a quaint little puzzle adventure game that I might finish in a day or two. I was way off! As the true scope of the game began to dawn on me I became pretty overwhelmed. Its big metroidvania world is packed full of clever puzzles and hidden chests. I was obsessively seeking them out, but it's honestly too much. The items you find to traverse the world and solve physics based puzzles are unique. One magnetizes you to metal objects allowing you to float along side it. Another creates a tether to wooden surfaces. I appreciated how well hidden new paths were. This filled the environment with potential exploration opportunities that never crossed my mind when passing the first time. Unfortunately, it's not the most polished experience. The game wants you to explore the edges of the world, but there are far too many flat surfaces that behave like slippery slopes. The game's approach to combat is "add more enemies" and they spawn, seemingly at random, taking annoying sucker punches from out of sight. Once I finished the game I had enough, getting 100% would have been tedious. Although, I probably would have done it if my time with Gamepass wasn't limited.
January 29 Recent coverage of Yakuza: Like a Dragon has put my interest in the Yakuza series at an all time high. Taking an evening to play Yakuza 0 has reminded me why I never jumped on board before. I spent the vast majority of my time with this game reading. Dialogue from cinematic cutscenes, pseudo cutscenes with still renders, and restrictive walk and talk conversations. I'm not against reading subtitles, but this is a lot. I missed dialogue from subtitles going by too fast or by nodding off for a moment. Mostly the beginings of a serious gangster plot. I was pretty luke warm on the fighting, although it got more interesting once I learned the rush stance and it may improve as the game progresses. The one karaoke song I played brutally decimated me. It's really the goofy stuff that interests me the most about these games. In my time with Yakuza 0 there was only an encounter with some drunken fools outside a pub and a mysterious old foreigner that resebled the Yakuza I was looking for. I still hold out hope that I may enjoy Like a Dragon some day, but I don't think I'll continue with 0.
January 29 - February 1 Eastshade was the perfect antidote for the overwhelming Supraland. It's a calm, combat free, game about being in nature, helping people and painting. The painting mechanic is a simple, but enjoyable, photo mode that saves a filtered screenshot on a canvas. Choosing an interesting composition by adjusting the canvas size was a cool touch of creativity. It bugged out on me twice, and painted a beautiful pixilated mess. Clients didn't care, it was funnier than it was frustrating. Tasks range from fetch quests to head scratching riddles. There's even a "murder" mystery. Some can be solved in multiple ways. All assigned by the diverse people on a quaint little island with a rich history. Created by an environment artist, the star of the show is the island of Eastshade. Most of the world is devoid of people. Made to explore and marvel at the beauty of the beaches, forests, cliffs, caves and mountainscapes.
February 1 ReCore has a few things going for it, but I decided to drop it after an hour or two. Going in I knew the game was poorly received, but I was still curious. The character designs have personality and the involvement of Keiji Inafune got my attention. The combat has a few interesting mechanics, but the exploration/combat balance leaned too far into combat for my tastes. What exhausted me the most was the onslaught of crafting and incremental RPG upgrades I found. Rewarding exploration with the chore of inventory management was not encouraging.