by niflhe
Here's the on-going list for the games I played in 2023, for at least an hour or so.
(these are written over the course of the year, so any passages of time between thoughts are designated by dashes between paragraphs)
Showing 1-10 of 96 items
I certainly didn't expect to ring in the new year playing one of the greatest games of all time, but sometimes the cards align just so and Leon S. Kennedy is the only thing that can satiate that need. Resident Evil 4 is an odd beast compared to a lot of the games it inspired - the movement is stiff, the shooting is tricky, and the game loves to kill you out of nowhere if you aren't paying close attention. This is my first time not playing the Wii version (which I've played and beaten at least ten times). RE4 is pretty challenging when you can't instantly pop off headshots, turns out! --- Sometimes I think this game takes itself a bit too seriously in the beginning, but then you'll have Leon say something extremely dumb like, "your right hand comes off?" or "Saddler, you're small time!" and there's a setpiece where you run away from a giant mechanical statue of the castellan and... yeah, this game is definitely winking and nodding at the player. It's very silly and I love it. I somehow managed to beat some of the trickier rooms my first time through (namely, the water room, the double garrador fight, Verdugo, why are all the tricky rooms in the castle), even with me still getting used to the controls. At least I'm not reloading when I try to shoot anymore. The game is probably taking it easy on me, but I've definitely died about a half dozen times. --- oh my god the island *DRAGS*, y'all. --- 11 hours and change and I'm done! (in-game timer, probably not counting deaths). 888 zombos killed, 8 deaths and I'm pretty pleased overall. The island still drags a bit too long but I had an absolute blast. I probably won't do Assignment Ada or the Mercenaries for now, but I might circle back when I have a bit more time.
I've definitely fallen off of the Marvel movie train but I still *like* superheroes, it's only that I had a kid in the midst of Avenger mania and then completely lost the thread somewhere - I think the last one I saw was Black Panther and that seemed alright? Now there are TV shows and a whole freaking content platform dedicated to it and man, there's a lot of fluff to shift through. Marvel Snap seems neat though! Very quick six round card matches, every game has the potential to have new and exciting strategies to play off of the three different battlegrounds. Do you focus on the third field that hasn't been uncovered yet or do you maybe have a card that lets you see what the battlefields are going to be? Are there interesting synergies in your deck that you can exploit or can you mindfreak your opponent with just the right card? It's neat! Having a limited deck and only a few rounds makes it exciting and quick - I keep wanting to play more even though I've never traditionally been good at card games. I definitely popped off when I placed a Jessica Jones in a battlefield that cloned three copies of it to fill out for a 32 power win. I tried it again in a different round only to be met with four America Chavezs. Good times. --- Fell off this one pretty shortly thereafter, seeing people paying an actual, literal hundred dollars for a cool card left a foul taste in my mouth.
SoulSilver attempts to bring Gen 2 to what was, at the time, the more modern era of Pokemon and largely succeeded, though the level curve is still an actual crime. I thought LeafGreen was bad but holy shit, I forgot how low level the Gen 2 pokemon are. The first Gym has a level 13 Pidgeotto and the highest level you can fight in the Route outside of town is a level 5 Hoothoot. Maybe a level 6 Bellsprout if you go into the Tower. That's *dire*. This is the reason I'm not doing a Nuzlocke because doing a Gen 2 only run is hard enough as it is. Pour one out for my old Pokewalker, washed in the washing machine a decade ago and gone to Pokeheaven. --- I OHKO'd whitney's miltank with Heracross, nothing can stop me now. --- The level curve is still a crime. I'm just outside of Mahogany, the seventh gym, and I'm pretty sure Bryce's best Pokemon tops out at like 35. I think I remember the Indigo Plateau trainers topping out at like 50 the first go around. That's a lot of level to grind in-between. But hey, I finally got a Crobat. Now I just need to get it Cross Poison. --- The biggest issue with SoulSilver is the much noted level curve problems - Red's highest Pokemon is 88 and the rest are mid 80s - but the highest level wild Pokemon you can face leading up to that fight is 50. Getting a semi-decent team up to 60 in order to be able to have a slight chance took fighting every single trainer in Kanto (and the wild Pokemon there are largely useless, mostly hovering in the 30s with some level 10s sprinkled in the early areas) and then spending another ten hours fighting Golbats and Ursarings in Mt. Silver. It's exhausting, but I did manage to do it with a team of Tyranitar, Espeon, Feraligatr, Heracross, Ampharos, and Mamoswine.
I wish I knew what it was about me, as a person, who sees the new entry of a series coming out and thinks, "aw dang, I should play one of the older ones". It's happening with the new Dead Space remake where I'm looking at Game Pass thinking, "surely this game can't be that old, can it" and it happened with Fire Emblem Engage dropped. I didn't get that into Echoes at first blush - mostly because the first time I tried to buy this game, I somehow ended up buying a fake on ebay that wasn't even FE: Echoes but was instead a copy of Crush 3D with a blurry sticker of FE:Echoes stuck onto it and I have no idea how that happened - but even when I had a legitimate copy of the game, the changes in mechanics just threw me for a loop. You only have to be one faster to double? Archers can shoot from one away and can shoot up to FOUR AWAY? What the fuck are these dungeons, what is fatigue, oh my god why do these villagers suck so much. Hope you've figured out items have weight, because we're sure as shit not gonna explain it. Now that I've gotten a few acts in, Echoes has really grown on me. The animations are incredible, I love the voice acting, and the story is pretty engaging! All around, having a good time, though I have had to abuse the turnwheel on some encounters in Alm's half of Act 3. All of his crew are pretty squishy. Not as squishy as like *all* of Micaiah's crew in Radiant Dawn, but still. Squishy.
Cute, short, reverse-Katamari. Just like Katamari, though, it has that build up to calamity that I really appreciate. Once you get on a roll and start to see the path to swallowing the universe, it becomes really great. I do wish there was a big, final, swallow everything kind of send-off, but the final section is pretty good!
It's Trails, but this time in a pretty big city with a central crew that seems to stay pretty static throughout the main game. I've only known Tio for a few hours but if anything happens to her, I will perish from this earth, she is incredible. Everyone else is alright too! Love a good horndog character who isn't super gross. --- About twenty hours in so far and I'm still enjoying this gang! I had to turn the sound effects almost all the way down though because the confirmation sound effect rings in my brain and hurts my ears. An extremely me problem, one that only ever crops up in a handful of games (such as Kirby's Epic Yarn - the gem collecting sound or the weird background whistle in Dishonored 2). Luckily I can turn down sound effects here without losing too much. The sound mixing, in general, is all over the place. I kind of wish I was playing on PC because I could, theoretically, change the sound effect to a different one, but that would require rebuying the game and then messing around with ogg files or something, probably.
I love a good "world detective" game, a term I just made up to describe games where the central crux is figuring out a certain system, language, mystery, or lore. Games like Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Return of the Obra Dinn, Tacoma, Outer Wilds - something is a mystery and you need to figure it out, but no matter what, you're still figuring out the world state. (The Case of the Golden Idol is more of a straightforward detective game, though there are some cases where you're trying to figure out what's going on in the world but there's always a murder to solve) In Heaven's Vault, it's an ancient language and mystery you're trying to solve (so far) while hints and pieces of the world you inhabit are given to you. I'm definitely enjoying it, though I do wonder how the main character "knows" certain words are correct - the locking in feels a little arbitrary. Also she's kind of a dick! I do not know why she's kind of a dick, but I'm leaning into it because holy shit, she is acerbic.
I love the look of this game but cannot, for the life of me, get more than 50% just hits. No idea what I'm doing wrong. I'm usually pretty decent a rhythm games but this one is just escaping me!
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is one of my favorite games ever, full stop. Playing through this game again (even through the extremely slow opening hour) has been such an absolute joy, it's like I've been transported back in time to when I was 15. I'm now over double that age and I still love this game to pieces. I love all of the characters, I love the job system, I even find the laws fun to work around, even if the bosses you fight are largely immune to any negative repercussions which sucks! Let the boss get thrown in jail, show that no one is above the law (though this is reinforced that certain people ARE above the law because the law is trying to stop you, specifically). I love that Marche is a villain and he's not right, but he's not exactly wrong, either. You can't stay in the dreamland but he definitely doesn't know that before he starts going around smashing the things holding the world together. I'm keeping my team pretty small this time - only eight people total so I can send off some of my team on dispatch quests without losing out. In past memory, Marche is always extremely slow because I have a tendency to rush through Soldier to get to Fighter so he can learn Air Render, so I'm actually having him go Ninja right now. I'm trying to make Montblanc useful, so I'm giving him some Thief speed, then will transfer him back to Black Mage to round that out and go Time Mage. Still need to figure out what I want my Bangaa and Nu Mou to end up being. Viera's either go Assassin or Red Mage/Summoner. As an aside, there's a person from when this game was new posting on the internet who speaks entirely in character as a Bangaa, complete with double s's. I wonder how they're doing and what kind of psychic damage would be inflicted on their person by showing them their old posts. --- Oh man, the Laws do kinda suck, though. The main issue is the vagueness in a lot of the wording that I can't tell if it's intentional or not. One law bans Swords and it's not clear if that's all swords, or just straight swords, or does this include things like rapiers or greatswords too? Can I still use reaction commands like Counter or does that count as a sword hit? Do using abilities that then hit with a sword count? The game's sure not gonna tell you and if Marche gets a red card it's game over and that happened to me accidentally! The Copycat Law suuuuuuucks. I might put a little more time in because I do want to make my party of stone cold killers but I also might jump ship to the sequel soon which makes the laws much more clear and less punishing.
It's more Theatrhythm! That's it, that's kinda all you need to know. Do you like Final Fantasy music and rhythm games? Then hoo boy, strap in, because have I got the game for you. New in this game (and I think the arcade game this is based on?) is the removal of the tap mode and the introduction of double notes - two inputs that you need to hit at the same time. Sometimes it's two long notes, two different directions you need to swipe, or two notes to tap. It's surprisingly tricky, how adding in one little change makes everything more challenging! I don't necessarily love all of the changes, namely I miss the randomly generated quest mode most of all - just having certain songs strung together was so much fun. The character abilities seem a bit more limited than Curtain Call and I think the game is pushing you to have certain teams more suited to doing elemental damage than pure damage. Still, I'm having a lot of fun.