by aggrocraig
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
Blue Prince is a difficult game to write about, because I want nothing more than for any potential player to experience the joy of discovery entirely on their own. I’ll get the broad strokes out of the way up front: I think that Blue Prince is a masterpiece of game design, my favorite game of this year, and one of my favorite games I’ve played in a decade or more. Expertly combining aspects of drafting board and card games, classic adventure/puzzle games, and a roguelike structure, Tonda Ros (and the folks that helped with presentation) made something special. The basic setup is simple but whets the appetite: your great uncle left you the family estate in his will, and the catch is that to collect your inheritance you must first find the 46th room in the 45-room home. Achieving that goal is about as mind-bending as you might expect. Every day, you enter the house in an Entrance Hall with three doors, and each time you open a door, you’re presented with three options for which room should be on the other side. As the day progresses, you build out the house, explore each room to find resources and equipment that will help you go further, and solve puzzles both contained within rooms and spread throughout them. Often, you’ll need information from one or more other rooms to solve a puzzle you find and, since there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually have those rooms at the time, keeping notes about your discoveries and theories is a must. I have pages and pages of conspiracy theorist notes about this game and I love looking back at them now to see how I thought things worked. I don’t want to go into further detail about the structure for fear of spoiling the fun of finding things out, which I hope anyone reading this will go and do once you’re done with this list. There is a great deal of storytelling filling in the margins of these puzzles, appearing in books and newspaper clippings as well as being gleaned from the environment and background details of the various rooms. The worldbuilding that Blue Prince achieves is outstanding; even though you’re going to get the pieces in your own order the experience of having it all come together into a more complete picture was a pleasure to see. The visuals and sound design fit the game perfectly, with low-key music that swells just a bit as something cool happens, and each item/resource having their own signature sounds that will become ingrained in your subconscious if you play too long. It’s worth mentioning that during my time with the game, I hit a nasty save bug where my game stopped being able to save, leading to me losing around 10-12 hours of progress all-told and losing the ability to progress further for quite some time while it was fixed, but that’s all since been resolved and even considering that frustration, I still consider Blue Prince to be a game beyond reproach. Please play it, and what’s more, please talk to me about your discoveries and theories. I love seeing it all come together for people.
You are a demon made of glass and pain. Yet you must skate. That’s pretty much the setup that Skate Story has to offer before giving you the goal of skating through hell and eating the moon. What follows in the next 6-8 hours is what I’d call as close to a successor to Sayonara Wild Hearts that we’re likely to ever get: a game of wild visuals, a propulsive soundtrack, and gameplay that feels so tight and natural that it’s easy to hit a perfect flow state and let the whole experience wash over you. With a story that’s unapologetically strange and shot through with fun characters and funny dialogue tying everything together, the game takes players through a series of chapters where new aspects of the skating mechanics are brought forth which allow for even more impressive sequences of flips and spins to be chained together, all while doing hell-skate-battle with demon cops, colorful moons, and more. It’s a pretty simple (if bonkers) summary, but the devil is in the details. It’s hard to express just how well-crafted every aspect is, as well as how impressively everything comes together. The skating mechanics aren’t a rehash of Tony Hawk or Skate, Skate Story has its own system which feels of a kind with its forebears but still its own thing. It’s rolled out to the player bit by bit over the course of the game, but not in such a way that you unlock abilities. If you mess around with the controls and figure out how to do more complex tricks early on, you can do them right away, leading to an almost old-MK-fatality feeling of happening to find a button combo that does something cool and then trying to reverse-engineer what you just did so that you can do it again. Every intense skating segment is paired with its own song from the game’s incredible soundtrack, which I can’t praise highly enough. I mentioned the flow state already, but that feeling is the crown jewel of Skate Story: the music worms its way into your head, and you’re not holding a controller and hitting buttons anymore. Put simply, you must skate.
It’s hard to talk about Dispatch without talking about the Telltale adventure games of the twenty-teens. I was pretty hit or miss with those games, not being a fan of most of them but finding Wolf Among Us fun and compelling. From all that, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Dispatch, but from seeing the setup of a superhero not able to do his normal work being relegated to a dispatcher for other heroes, I was intrigued enough to give it a shot. By the end of the first couple of episodes, I was locked the hell in and counting down to each week’s release of new chapters. Within that experience lies what I consider one of Dispatch’s first big wins: its release schedule. A lot of the episodic games in that last Telltale era were released on erratic schedules, with episodes hitting at seemingly-random intervals where it was easy to lose momentum and forget what was going on. With a consistent release schedule of two chapters every week for a month, I stayed engaged for the whole thing, with maybe two or three hours worth of story to take in a week. Just enough to keep me wanting more until the whole thing was done, and that was a key part of helping this game put its best foot forward. Of course, none of that would matter if the game itself didn’t hold up its end of the bargain, but I find Dispatch to be the finest entry in this modern choice-based adventure genre to date. The performances up and down the cast are top notch, from the professional actors to the YouTube (and other internet) folks who have less experience. I actually want to give some extra love to those newer actors in the cast, as they actually gave some of my favorite performances entirely (both JackSepticEye as Punch-Up and Yung Gravy as Golem were big standouts for me!) Everyone in the cast is firing on all cylinders though, and just as importantly they have excellent material to work with. The story that unfolds over the course of Dispatch plays masterfully with superhero tropes, subverting expectations here and there while leaning into tried and true story bits elsewhere. Its biggest storytelling win in my eyes comes from a key part of the setup: the heroes that the main character Robert is dispatching are all former supervillains being rehabilitated and showing that they can be heroes, which makes the game a multi-layered story centered around different people seeking redemption in their own ways. Everyone here has regrets, they’ve made decisions that they shouldn’t have, but (at least the way I played it) nobody is so far gone that they are beyond a second chance, provided they’re willing to work for it. At the end of the game I was satisfied with the results of my decisions and the way the story played out, with everything wrapping up in a way that felt true to what I had decided along the way. Equal parts funny, exciting, and emotional, Dispatch is an excellently-told story, and I’m going to be there day one for whatever Adhoc Studio makes next.
“despelote is a soccer game about people.” The first sentence of despelote’s Steam description is a perfect summary of what’s going on here. For some quick background, it’s an autobiographical slice-of-life story from the creator’s childhood, set in Quito, Ecuador during the period where the national team was fighting to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. Each “chapter” of the game centers around a game in that qualifying run, where you play as young Julian as he, well, lives his life: going to class, playing in the park with his friends, going to a family wedding, whatever that day may be, all while TVs around town are all tuned in to an ongoing soccer match. Occasionally there’s a jump into Julian’s teen years as he pursues soccer himself, and also some common foibles that teenagers of all stripes run into. The story being told takes many forms, building a natural verisimilitude that runs throughout the experience. Chapters often start with a newspaper seller shouting headlines while also talking about the stakes of the next qualifier, but even more of the story comes to the player through overhearing bits and pieces of conversations that the adults in Julian’s orbit are having. Whether it’s his parents having a conversation about family dynamics related to an ongoing argument about having a soccer match playing at a wedding, or a guy at the park chatting with a chochos vendor about how money’s been extra tight lately, or many other tidbits you pick up about the lives of folks around town, it all comes across as small and personal things about these people that ring true. The topics being discussed are figuratively and literally over the little boy’s head, but those are just the sorts of conversations that exist in the background of memories and make a person who they are over time. The game’s presentation is something I lack the vocabulary to describe, but I’ll do my best. Quito is rendered in what looks like satellite map data processed through a low-color visual filter, and people (as well as animals and some interactable objects) stick out against this backdrop as black and white thickly-outlined drawings. The contrast is both visually striking and useful while exploring, as it helps the player find who and what they can go check in on to see what they can learn. My Spanish isn’t what it once was, but the voice acting hit my ear well, and I loved wandering around and trying to listen in on any conversations I could and just learning about these people. Of course, it is autobiographical, so it is real, but it’s still important to stress how real it all feels. In an era where so many games feel like products, like content, it’s incredibly refreshing to play something that is so completely not that. despelote is a person telling his story: the story of his family, his country, and a sport that brought everyone together despite whatever difficulties were hanging over them. It’s beautiful, and I hope that people check it out.
Hades 2 is a tricky game to talk about, because I think that somehow its greatest strength and greatest weakness is that it’s a sequel to Hades. It builds on the excellently-tuned gameplay of the original Hades with new weapons, new gods and boons, and many other mechanical advancements, all of which add up to a game that feels great to play. There are some bold structural additions that I don’t want to describe in detail as they’re better discovered through play, but anyone who’s played a fair amount of the game likely knows what I mean. This aspect of the game is in my eyes its biggest win, offering up a great deal more variety between runs and allowing for more complexity in what can be required for storyline progression. In between runs, many things are very similar to the original game, with many characters populating a hub area for the player to speak with to advance the story, develop relationships, and use mechanics found during runs to unlock upgrades to aid in future runs. All of this still works very well, with many well-written characters (Hecate’s a personal favorite) and strong tuning on the various upgrade mechanics to keep things moving forward. Hades 2 kept me moving through its whole story well, keeping me on the hook run after run to find what I could do to progress, to see more new scenes, and to finally make it to the proper ending. The story was fun to see through but maybe a little more straightforward than its predecessor, but some individual moments (and especially some of the character relationship dialogue) help to make up for that. It should come as no surprise given Supergiant and Darren Korb’s history, but it still bears mentioning how excellent the soundtrack is. The music is great top to bottom, and in some cases it even changes as you play more runs, to great dramatic (and comedic) effect. Really, the only thing that keeps Hades 2 from being closer to the top of this list is that, well, Hades was an amazing game, and even though I think Hades 2 is a superior one, it’s still a bit held back by the feeling that its great accomplishments have, in many ways, been done before. Regardless of any of that, though, if you’ve played Hades, you don’t need me to tell you to play Hades 2, and if you’ve played neither, my dear friend you have dozens of hours of fun waiting for you.
I feel like I’ve seen a criminally small amount of conversation about Sword of the Sea, which makes me fear that people don’t know that this game even exists. Easiest to describe as Journey by way of Tony Hawk, my pitch would be something along these lines: did you like that section in Journey where you did cool sand-dune sliding and everything looked awesome and was super cool for a while? What if a game harnessed that feeling and dealt it out to you over its entire runtime? That’s more or less what Sword of the Sea is, an adventure where you play an ethereal character called a Wraith who rides a hoversword like a skateboard around a mostly abandoned world. As you explore, you can interact by letting out little energy projections which “activate” various things around the world, often triggering transformations large and small. You may be opening a chest or causing some platforms to appear so you can proceed, or you may fill an entire desert area with water and turn it into a beautiful ocean area full of sea life seemingly swimming through the air. As you bring more and more of the ocean back to this arid world, it becomes an increasingly lovely place to inhabit, and you can hitch a ride on a wide range of creatures while you admire the scenery. There are many little collectibles to find all around the various environments, and trading certain numbers of those floating shapes into a vendor will unlock more fun skate tricks that you can perform on your hoversword, making moving around the areas even more of a good time. Some sections even have little skate parks off of the main path, where you can undergo proper skate challenges where you need to reach a score threshold within a certain time period, with a reward of more currency for learning moves. These break up the pace of exploration in a fun way, giving a chance to use the skating mechanics for more than just traversal. Watching the world transform as the story unfolds is breathtaking, the visuals and soundtrack perfectly accentuating every moment. The story itself isn’t too involved, but it’s enough to keep things going from one beautiful locale to another. Sword of the Sea is another excellent offering from Giant Squid, proving themselves masters of atmosphere and, especially with The Pathless and now their latest work, satisfying and fluid character movement. So, dear reader, get this game, perhaps your mind-altering substance of choice, and then have one or two of the most awe-inspiring gaming sessions you’ll have all year.
Continuing Nintendo’s trend of games that are pure, uncut fun, Donkey Kong Bananza was as good of a showcase game for the Switch 2’s early months as I could have asked for. This is Nintendo 3D platforming up to its usual standard, with a fun twist befitting DK: nearly all of the terrain in all of the game’s environments is destructible, with the bulk of the gameplay revolving around the player punching their way through walls and making caves through the rocks to find collectibles and progress the story. It’s clear pretty much immediately that the Mario Odyssey team had their hands in the production of this game, as it gets at the same core approach that made Odyssey so compelling for me. No matter where I wandered in the many layers, there was something to find and whatever silly idea I had was met with some kind of reward. As I dug deeper towards the core of the planet, the level design stayed fun and exciting, as hilarious as it is to dig down through the ground and emerge in a huge beach space full of giant cube-shaped fruit (shoutouts to Dark Souls 2, you were ahead of your time.) The game keeps things fresh with unlockable abilities like new transformations that DK can perform, taking on different animal forms to gain new powers and access new areas. None of them are particularly complex, but they add an extra dimension to the gameplay and also open up more options for the designers when putting together challenges for the player to overcome. Much like Odyssey, Bananza has plenty of doors that teleport DK away from the larger world into a smaller room with a more bespoke, focused course that centers on one mechanic and explores it in a few different ways, with a few different bananas available depending on whether the player achieves the basic goal or shows some greater mastery of that room’s challenge. Once enough bananas are collected, the player can fight a boss, travel to the next area, and continue the story. The story in general is pretty light, but even if I’m not going into specifics, I must say that Bananza has a fantastic final sequence and ending, one which layers strong mechanics and laser-focused nostalgia into a masterful last chapter. It’s an outstanding game, one which I consider a must-have for anyone who ends up with a Switch 2.
I didn’t play the original Air Ride much at all, and my general perspective on the game was total bewilderment about a one-button game that somehow also seemed far too much for me to get a handle on. With the release of this followup, I don’t think that my view has changed much at all in that regard, but the fact that I’m pretty awful at this game doesn’t get in the way of me having a total blast every time I boot it up. The single player road trip mode was a fun way to learn the ropes, after which I could bounce around between all the different modes and have a grand old time. The fact that each mode has a grid of goals to perform to unlock all manner of different things encouraged me to try out everything, but at this point all I’m really doing is playing City Trial over and over. I gather that City Trial isn’t too different from its previous incarnation, but somehow the formula has stayed entertaining through dozens of plays, even if I’m mostly just playing against a bunch of random computer riders. I still have tons of unlocking to do and a list of things I’ve never found or done in the city that I want to get done. I’ve only gotten to play locally with friends once, but it was so much fun that I’m dying to spend more time with it. I don’t see any reason why this game will ever be uninstalled from my Switch, and I’m looking forward to breaking it out at get-togethers for years to come. As long as I can play as Rick the hamster wearing a sweet outback-style hat, I’ll be as happy as can be.
I’m a modern-era Monster Hunter fan, having started with World and then moving on to Rise and now Wilds, and this newest entry fits right into that “new” Monster Hunter family that I’ve come to love. The additions from the previous games are pretty much what would be expected: new movesets for old favorite weapons, new and returning monsters, and cool locations in which to fight them. Of course, as someone with a lot of entries I didn’t play, just about all of the returning monsters were new to me, which made the whole thing feel fresh. Overall, I think the cast of monsters in Wilds is good, though I thought the “guardian” versions of old monsters fell a little flat after the first one or two. I really enjoyed the “storyline finale” fight, as well as the monsters being added post-release, so there’s been no shortage of fun to be had despite some lower points. I love the attack set that the hammer was given in Wilds, continuing its reign as my forever favorite weapon. Charging up the “why I oughta” spin smash never lost its charm, and when an update added the ability to clash with monster attacks to set up a huge hit, everything got even more fun. The other big feature from this game is the addition of seikrets, raptor-like mounts that make moving around the world easier and open up some new options in combat. They’re not a super deep system (mounted combat, at least with the hammer, wasn’t super involved so it mostly was just a mobile platform to do jump attacks from) but the convenience and ability to do things like sharpen weapons on the move made the seikrets a welcome addition. Most importantly, Monster Hunter with friends is one of my favorite game experiences, and as always I had the most fun running hunts with friends. This entry makes it more convenient than ever (at least in games I’ve played) to get a party together even for storyline quests, so we had no problem playing through the entire game as a crew. Overall, I had a great time with Wilds, and I’m looking forward to the inevitable expansion a la Iceborne which will give all the more reason to get the gang back together and hunt some more.
From the instant this game was announced, I was all in. Tetris Effect is a masterpiece, a brilliant pairing of a legendary puzzle game with the particular audio-visual magic for which Tetsuya Mizuguchi has become known. Finding out that his company was taking on another puzzle series with a similar treatment was all I needed to hear. Of course, the catch in this case was that while I was very familiar and comfortable with Tetris, I hadn’t played much Lumines in the past. I never had a PSP, so I missed out on the genesis of the series, and fiddling with a bit of Lumines Supernova wasn’t enough to learn how to play well. However, I’ve been having a great time learning the ropes of the puzzle mechanics and slowly developing the skills and instincts to play at a high level, in no small part because of the amazing presentation offered by Arise. Much like Tetris Effect, possibly even more so, the stages’ visuals and music are breathtaking to behold, and the way everything reacts to your gameplay builds that connection between player and game like few other games do. I still haven’t finished the whole Journey mode on the hardest difficulty, but I’m working on it. I’m very glad that Arise has a many-stage Mission mode which functions as an increasingly-advanced tutorial for learning beginner to complex techniques for building proper combos and maximizing scores, as I feel like I’m learning and improving. Another puzzle banger from Enhance, one that’s absolutely worth your time if you’re looking for some puzzle game fun or even just to admire some excellent music and animation.
