Mento's Month: November '25
by mento
Game of the Month: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, 2025)
Even with strong competition coming from Obsidian that I'll get into in just a moment, Clair Obscur's looking like a lock for my favorite game from 2025. A little premature, perhaps, since this was yet another astounding year for games for which I've barely scratched the surface as of yet, though I feel pretty confident for reasons that are a little tough to articulate. I've said almost all I wanted to in this Go! Go! GOTY! review—it was the only G!G!GOTY! entry I could muster this month, but more should be coming once the site reopens a week into December provided I can figure out all the revamped tools—but with Clair Obscur I find myself in a similar headspace as with NieR: Automata back in 2017. That year was, and continues to be, truly challenging to parse in GOTY terms because it was so absolutely packed with games that I loved that the only way a single entity could float its way to the very top is if it had a profound emotional affect on me, specifically that of gratitude. I had so much gratitude towards Platinum for effectively resurrecting what was a deeply strange and issue-laden PS3 game that I nonetheless had to go to bat for at any opportunity due to just how creative and potentially important it was to video games as a whole (an aspect that only becomes more prevalent with time, which makes it one of those qualities that a contemporaneous GOTY list cannot otherwise consider truthfully (but my "GOTY (Adjusted)" series fortunately can with all that extra time for these games to stew)) and to have Automata sort of realize that original game's potential and introduce it to a much larger audience really made me happy that so many talents had gone to all that effort to She's All That an evident diamond in the rough, not least of which being the original Nier creator Yoko Taro. With Clair Obscur, though we're still only around six months out from its release, it has that similar vibe of not only being this wonderful piece of art with plenty of innovations and a saturnine personality wholly of its own but also a game that fully embraces what made the huge spectacle JRPGs of the PS1 and PS2 eras feel special and momentous before the market for them dried up and they became something of a niche on the PS3 onward. RPGs have certainly made a recent comeback even before Clair Obscur, of course, with that genre offering GOTY candidates for what feels like the last four years running between Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, and Metaphor: ReFantazio but this is yet another indication that these games not only have an enormous fanbase hungering for more of what they loved from their halcyon days (or are being introduced to a world of similar projects) but that there's still room for them to grow.
It might be a little strange to list "gratitude" as the reason for putting a game in your top spot for any given year but with the industry in the state of turmoil that it is, and with much of the next generation of game-enjoyers switching over to "forever games" like Fortnite and asking their relatives for V-Bucks for Christmas, it's easy to feel like this medium is slipping away from what it is I'm into and what really helps it stand apart as an artistic medium still finding its feet. That games like Clair Obscur and those named above can come along and find such approbation from all corners, young and old, makes me feel less, I guess, lonely. In the context of my video gaming tastes of course. (Ironically, the cure for actual loneliness would probably be all those social games I just dissed, especially given how pivotal they were for maintaining relationships during the pandemic era.) If I can go into a fresh new year feeling like the amazing visual-, audio- and systems-rich single-player RPGs that have enthralled me since I first booted up Secret of Mana on my SNES aren't going to dry up any time soon if they keep capturing the zeitgeist in this manner, then I can feel that much more confident about weathering whatever might ensue from this garbage industry to come. And, hey, seeing just how well Sandfall Interactive was able to comport itself after a single release makes me root for the dissolution of Ubisoft all the harder so that a dozen more studios just like Sandfall can rise from its ashes. The death of Ubisoft; now that's something we can all agree to be optimistic about in 2026 (and they can take the Saudi-fied genAI Electronic Arts with them).
Speaking of new beginnings, unrelated to Clair Obscur and its foot-loving marionnette yetis, we'll be getting a new Giant Bomb site in a scant few days after you read this. Just wanted to assure/terrify folks in letting them know that for as long as GB provides an avenue to keep dropping these giant screeds of mostly gobbledegook onto an unsuspecting (and frankly undeserving) internet I will continue to do so. Plenty of foolhardy blog feature ideas for next year, including a timely return of a few old favorites of mine, so I hope you enjoy reading them and all the others from this incredible blogging community that our technical maven
Other Gaming Tomfoolery
I've been availing myself of some free Game Pass once again and, with that, getting in plenty of 2025 GOTY homework as the year's end beckons. However, beyond Clair Obscur and a few Indies that made it into the IGotW feature, I've yet to make enough progress in the others I've checked out to write up a review for them this month. I can at least give you an idea of where I'm at with a few I'm in the process of playing however:
Blue Prince (Dogubomb, 2025)
I've been enjoying this recent trend for logical puzzle-adventure games following the likes of Return of the Obra Dinn et al, and there's certainly a number I intend to catch up on—most pressing of which include Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, The Roottrees are Dead, and The Rise of the Golden Idol—but while Blue Prince is the highest profile one-of-those right now, to the extent that there's enough GOTY murmurs to warrant anyone's attention, I can't say I'm particularly bewitched with it quite yet. Most of that, I'll admit, is due to its divisive run-based format. The idea is that your grand-uncle (or grunkle, as Gravity Falls would have it) left you his impressive manse Mt. Holly in his will but with the stipulation that you find and open the secretive 46th room hidden somewhere deep within. The problem there is that, due to some unexplained phenomenon, the mansion "unbuilds" itself every night and so you're required to architecturally plan out rooms from beyond the entry hall with each new morning, using rooms with multiple exits to extend as far inwards as possible with the end result of finding an antechamber—the only other room with a predetermined placement besides the entrance—and the mysterious room 46 somewhere beyond it.
However, each time you open a door to place a new room you're randomly assigned three choices and that might mean having no other option than to plop down a dead end that either has no other exits to begin with or exits that might already be blocked by previous room placements. You're also strictly limited by how much you can move around in a single day, and some rooms require collectible items like gems and keys (as rooms are more likely to be locked the further in you go) to access. If you run out of keys or gems or steps, or hit nothing but dead ends via the "roomdomizer" process, then the day is abruptly over and you have to reset everything, including your inventory. There's precious few permanent carryovers between sessions, chief of which is any information you may have gleaned about how a particular puzzle works or maybe even a terminal password or lock combination that you can keep using with each new refresh. It's beyond excruciating to get a good run going only to hit a wall (often literally) with some unfortunate room draws or a lack of keys, with several runs often resulting in the sinking feeling that you've made zero progress whatsoever. The lack of being able to explore to your heart's content given the strict limit on the number of steps you can take per day—they only tick down once you enter a new room, mind, so you can check the current one top to bottom unimpeded—puts a dampener on roaming around too much to check up on previous forks or to refresh your memory about any documents or wall art that might turn out to be relevant hints. It feels like a game that is built counterintuitive to what it sets out to accomplish with its environmental puzzles and sense of curiosity by smacking such exploratory thoughts out of your head with its strict limitations and constant resets; the sort of dichotomy of design that is rare these days but occasionally happens as Indies in particular continue to mesh conflicting genre types together to see what new viable chimeras can be created, and mushing a 7th Guest/Myst puzzle game with a run-based format just feels like a complete whiff to me. Evidently I'm in the minority about that if the critical whispers are anything to go by, and I continue to attempt one new run per day just to see if I'll eventually hit the magical trigger that will make this hybrid format suddenly work for me, but for now I can't really argue it'll be making my personal top games list for this year. (Well, barring the fact that I don't have enough games to fill out a top ten and it'll be on there by default.)
Avowed (Obsidian, 2025)
A 2025 game I'm unequivocal about enjoying is Obsidian's Avowed, which arrived early enough this year that it might find itself being criminally overlooked. Taking place in the same bespoke fantasy world as the Pillars of Eternity games, Avowed adopts a first-person perspective more familiar to Obsidian fans who discovered the company through their superlative Fallout: New Vegas or their zeerustic sci-fi capitalism parody The Outer Worlds as you make your way across the dangers of the near-sentient Living Lands, a region much further north than the two Pillars settings of the Dyrwood (PoE1) and the Polynesian-inspired Deadfire archipelago (PoE2), as one of the world's few remaining "godlikes": those so named for physical birth defects that resemble characteristics of the world's pantheon of bickering gods, many of which are known to take animal forms. Godlikes were possible character race choices in both Pillars games along with one notable recruitable PC—the feathery paladin Pallegina mes Rèi—so the revelation that one of the big consequences from Pillars II's big iconoclastic denouement was the sudden mysterious deaths of almost all godlikes the world over has me a little concerned for my favorite bird-paladin. Either way, that your godlike characteristics don't resemble any of the known gods and that you somehow survived this culling are just two of several big question marks that your journey across the Living Lands will hopefully answer.
Thankfully, Obsidian knows how best to merge the warm and familiar with the exciting and new, having cut their teeth on producing exceptional entries in RPG series created by others going as far back as their work with Neverwinter Nights 2, KOTOR 2, and New Vegas. The designers' choice to make your first companion a wisecracking shark man performed by Brandon Keener, best known as the voice as Garrus Vakarian, was a fine way to accommodate and assuage those of us concerned about the future of BioWare and the type of RPGs they were fond of making will continue elsewhere if the worst comes to pass (unless MS scraps Obsidian too so they'll have more income to throw into the AI money pit). Avowed streamlines the D&D-adjacent ruleset of the Pillars games to give you multiple simplified options for character builds, streamlined in the sense that you'll only ever have a handful of active and passive skills to worry about (even for mages, who now must equip grimoires that have at most four spells apiece), though broad enough that you can liberally pluck the fruits from fighter, ranger, and wizard skilltrees alike for your preferred build. I've gone for a scholarly sort that emphasizes wand usage over spells (since constantly keeping up my "essence", i.e. mana, can be a drag) which has effectively turned me into a rootin'-tootin' magical cowboy with how I enter every battle with my two six-shooters blazing (there are also guns in this universe, but they're flintlocks and arquebuses that trade high damage for slow reloads while being too loud for stealth; the wands are way faster and require no reloading by comparison). I'm playing on the hardest setting for achievements (naturally) so I am getting my ass kicked frequently, but mechanics like being able to revive companions and having one freebie "second wind" mechanic to resurrect yourself does mean that if you're losing a battle too often the game probably doesn't want you to partake in it quite yet.
Speaking of combat, Avowed does have a Dragon Age 2 problem where you might chance upon an enemy group and think "right, so there's five dudes here and at my level I think I can take them" only for that five to suddenly become ten and then fifteen as more waves spawn in from nowhere. It's a bummer because you're making these split decisions in the field and so very rarely does one's tactical calculations account for "abject teleportation bullshit" as a factor. For that reason and several others it's best to quick save before attacking anyone, though you could also take a look at the level difference (represented by skulls; the more of them they have, the more one-sided the match-up in their favor) and just try strolling somewhere else instead. Very much a similar case to Divinity: Original Sin 2 (or the Borderlands games going further back) where, though you have an open map to explore, there are places you're maybe meant to go first for the resources and XP required to tackle those to come later. At least the game's use of discrete regions means the level difference will never be too insurmountable if you felt like pressing your luck for some high-quality gear.
Beyond all that though I'm having a ball exploring the game's large regions, finding treasure in all sorts of hidden places (it hums slightly to let you know there's something precious nearby, at least), and enjoying the rich worldbuilding and character work that has long been Obsidian's forte. That the combat is tough makes it all the more rewarding—playing The Witcher 3 on its highest difficulty for similar achievement goblin reasons also improved that game immeasurably in my view also, as 90% of playing it would've been an open-world slogfest otherwise—and tinkering with the upgrade paths for characters and items alike has been very engrossing. I'm just about done with the first region of the game, Dawnshore, and I've been told in-universe that it's only going to get more inhospitable from here on out. Eager to keep digging into this game some more as we enter December and the year's final days—it's definitely already earned its vaunted #2 spot on my GOTY list this year. Well, at least until I finally get around to Silksong and Metroid Prime 4 anyway.
The "Indie Game of the Week" of the Month: PowerWash Simulator 2 (FuturLab, 2025)
I don't know what it is about menial labor in video games but I found PowerWash Simulator 2 (#444) to be every bit as compelling as its predecessor, systematically cleaning the grime off a series of bizarre structures and vehicles as a matter of course for the first half of November. It truly defies any attempt to explain what makes this rote process enjoyable for the fiftieth time but all I can offer is that it taps into the completionist mindset as much as any 3D platformer collectathon or map-barf open-world game with all its targets to polish until you hear/see that congratulatory "ding!"/sparkle, and can move onto an adjacent dirty fixture or wall in your ongoing process to return the filthy and impure to the fresh and immaculate. Chill vibes, unhurried gameplay loops, a clean and straightforward visual aesthetic, and a jovial sense of humor guiding the whole shebang really makes your workload not feel like, well, work.
Our runners-up include the excellent if a little overlong Zeldersatz (or Zelderkatz, as I'm sure we'll all be referring to it in due time) Crypt Custodian (#445), the latest (for now) game from Islets/Sheepo creator Kyle Thompson, which gives you a large map to roam around in provided you have the adequate traversal upgrades to reach its furthest regions; the superlative ball-juggler Ball X Pit (#446) which, unlike Blue Prince, was one of those "can the run-based format blend with this genre?" experiments that I was actually on board with; and finally another such hybrid with Mullet MadJack (#447), combining an overly silly macho '90s FPS with a frantic endless runner dynamic that demanded that you never slow down or take in the sights lest your mere ten second lifespan come to a sudden stop, which honestly might be the game closest to representing what it would be like to be a mayfly. Just three IGotW entries left to go for next month, all of which are going to be 2025 list-stuffers so I can get something approaching a top ten going... though I suspect I'll fall a little short and might have to punt my list forward until the end of January again.
Mastering the Master System (Part 11)
I thought about going with "games from France" as a theme this month since we're (or at least I am, some several months after the fact) celebrating Clair Obscur but since I didn't feel like playing both the SMS Astérix games I've instead opted to try a slightly different if lazier idea I'd been batting around where I just hit the randomizer a few times and then chose two out of the first five results, making them a partially curated selection. I'd then hit it once more and take whatever resulted for the compulsory random choice as per usual. Here's what it spat back out:
- Wonder Boy in Monster World: The direct sequel to the previously played Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, this one isn't quite as exploraction-focused but still offers a mix of non-linear traversal and light RPG mechanics.
- Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord: One of the system's few "western" style RPGs, albeit developed by Sega of Japan and based on a PC-88 game, this is apparently a pretty slow but rewarding quest like many vintage CRPGs. However, since I'd grabbed a free month of Game Pass for November and this is an estimated 20 hours long, I had to skip it this time.
- Heroes Against Demons: A 2020 homebrew that looks like Puzzle Quest on a budget. Hmm. I do like Puzzle Quest...
- Rambo: First Blood Part 2: Alternatively known as Secret Command and Ashura depending on which regions had what licenses to exploit, this Ikari Warriors knock-off is known for being very challenging. Will it get to win this time?
- Golden Axe: It's Sega's most famous brawler, at least of the non-Streets and non-Beast variety, and I was half-tempted to boot this up if only to see how badly the SMS handled all those voice samples.
As for the compulsory randomizer choice, well... he's back. Though in some ways he never left?
Wonder Boy in Monster World
- Type: Partially Random
- Developer: Westone
- Release Year: 1993
We're back with the absolute unit that is Wonder Boy with this, the fifth game in the series as well as the third in the Monster World subseries, which released exclusively in Brazil and Europe (it'd have to with a release year that late) as opposed to the Mega Drive original that was more or less available everywhere. It follows the game that was both the fourth Wonder Boy and second Monster World, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap (ignore the numeral), which I covered back in June, and like that game is a semi-open world 2D platformer with some very light RPG elements. However, there are very few traversal-based upgrades and the game is strictly linear if we keep to the critical path alone: i.e. there's no optional backtracking to earlier areas for treasures you couldn't reach previously (though you can still revisit them if you want) and all the game's main obstacles just need a key item to overcome. Enemies drop gold that you can spend on new gear to give yourself a fighting chance against the game's bosses, though the most important for progress are your boots which increase your speed and thus make certain platforming sequences possible. As an 8-bit port, it removes some of the content both by making the areas smaller and your inventory of gear less robust but otherwise does a fine job retaining the original's essence; several fans even prefer it for its careful concision compared to the more weighty MD original.
It is, I have to admit, an exceptional 8-bit platformer with plenty going on besides jumping and stabbing fools. It's not perfect, as its weapon reach is terrible unless you opt for the trident and go without your projectile-mitigating shield (a la The Legend of Zelda) and it likes its annoying flying enemies a little too much given it has several interchangeable variants of them, but that combination of RPG mechanics to improve your station and a deeply generous game over feature where you wake up back at the nearest inn no worse for the wear and with no penalty to your gold or progress makes it far more accessible than many other games of its type from that era. You've also got spells to fall back on, each with a set number of charges that replenish after an inn visit, including one that buffs you and another that warps you back to safety if you didn't feel like taking the long route. Considering most of the platformers I've played on this thing, including even those from the well-regarded Disney and Sonic series, this one's so much more mechanically substantial than the rest. I suppose being a port of a 16-bit game helps in that regard.
As for the achievements, well, it's a pretty standard assortment of helpful progress trackers (not that it's that easy to get lost; NPCs are usually pretty forthright about where to go next) and some of those no-damage boss clears that I'm just going to have to get used to seeing from RA whenever I dip into games from the distant past. Some notable exceptions include defeating the first boss of the game without taking damage at any point—and that includes several screens of enemies between him and where you start—as well as one where you cross an annoying swamp/jungle area without falling into the water once: this tested my patience because you can't jump off the vines that appear over the water, only fall off them and hope you're able to grab onto the next in time. Novel idea for an achievement at least. Last, and the two I'm missing, are game-wide challenges with harsh restrictions that almost but don't quite overlap, making them far too difficult (and irksome) to do simultaneously: one prohibits buying items at the store after the first boss (there's a pair of boots you need to buy prior to that, otherwise sections of the game can't be traversed) while the other prohibits the use of magic and defensive gear like shields and armor. The first does allow gear you find rather than buy, mitigating its challenge factor somewhat, while the latter does let you buy weapons and as many curatives as you can carry; however, the first allowance voids the second achievement and vice versa, so rather than playing through this 7-8 hour game three times I think I'll just stop here. Sometimes you just have this great notion for a challenge achievement and even the knowledge that most folks would probably not want to complete the same game three times in a row isn't going to get in the way of implementing it, consarnit.
- Achievements: 51 (of 53) / 96% / RR: x2.48
Heroes Against Demons
- Type: Partially Random
- Developer: Ichigo/2minds
- Release Year: 2020
Heroes Against Demons is a freeware game available on itch.io that also has physical editions for the Master System, Game Gear, and the Sega Mark III (the Japanese Master System) which can be bought directly from the developer's site. It's essentially a Match-3 game with a fantasy theme, not unlike the Puzzle Quest series, though with a bit more of a streamlined and action-oriented focus owing to its 8-bit status and the limitations involved. You select one of three champions with different stat distributions—the hunter is pure melee, making the best use of sword icons to attack; the witch uses magic, so with her you want to match up magical tome icons; and the crusader is half offense and half defense, making him an ideal choice for beginners due to his increased durability—and then take on a series of fifteen CPU opponents represented by various classic fantasy RPG monsters like skeletons, demons, and minotaurs. By matching three symbols on a grid you can perform various acts: swords are melee damage, tomes are magic damage, coins will give you currency to spend in the store between rounds (such as a health refill or a permanent boost to stats), and hearts will recover your health which is constantly being worn away by your opponent's relentless attacks. The other three create an additional layer of strategy: bombs will destroy a row to make it easier to create connections but will hurt you in the process, though matching three or more shields ahead of time means the bomb's damage is deflected onto the enemy instead so ideally you want to be alternating the two types. The potions will boost the player's stats and also the effects of any match-ups they make while it's active; a common strategy therefore is to scan the field for any potion combos you can make and then quickly nail as many other combos as you can in that short buff duration.
For as simple as this game is I found it pretty compelling, with the three protagonists and the option of which stats to push giving you a small degree of longevity if nothing like the hours-long campaigns of Puzzle Quest (for better or worse, depending on the time you have available). A session typically goes by fast even with fifteen opponents, maybe around 30-45 minutes or so in total, and with three continues (the usage of which determines the ending) it's unlikely you'll crash and burn unless you're a complete novice to Match-3 games. My usual issue with Match-3 is of course present here too: sometimes you'll have enough wriggle room to put together strategies like those I mentioned above with the potion boosters, but a lot of the time you'll be poking around the grid for the one set you're able to make at that juncture and you can get stuck in a bit of a rut until the game mercifully refreshes the grid once there are no more connections to make. To compensate, the game gives you the option of spending a chunk of your currency to reset the grid manually and regain the greater selection of icons you can match in whichever order works best but you can obviously only do this so many times and it'll mean fewer permanent upgrades from the store to rely on for the harder opponents to come. What grates about running into the "only one move available" arrangement is that the bombs can really wear you down if they're the only icons you can match up at that moment, absent the shields to deflect it, and that also goes for new bomb combinations that might immediately spawn and activate after clearing icons that you'd have no way of prepping for. If you're low on health, clear about six icons at once, and then you get two rows of bombs suddenly appearing and messing you up it can feel like you got cheated out of a clutch victory. Despite the few times that happened though, the game frequently sees that combination of player foresight and blind fortune that can make successful runs feel satisfying.
The achievement set is very fair and as a result Heroes Against Demons became my eighth SMS mastery since starting this feature. The set includes a build-based challenge run for each protagonist—the witch can't buy defense upgrades, the hunter can't buy offense upgrades (not that he needs them), and the crusader can't buy anything besides the health refills—as well as a tough endurance test where you can't even refill your health between rounds for the first four opponents: this requires a level of mastery of the game that far exceeds what is needed for a normal playthrough, ensuring you make full use of the potion/heart combos for boosted heals and avoid triggering any bombs if you're not protected. Beyond those, the rest are all for standard progress including earning all three endings (for using no continues, 1-2 continues, or all three continues respectively) so it's not too rough for once. Just as well, really, because now it's time for...
- Achievements: 22 (of 22) / 100% / RR: x1.22
ALF
- Type: Pure Random
- Developer: Nexa
- Release Year: 1989
The one SMS game I was dreading would come up in the randomizer finally did, like a 2am Nick-at-Nite rerun when you're too sleepy to change the channel or crawl away into bed. This is A.L.F., the game based on the '80s sitcom A.L.F., which in turn is based on the fictional extraterrestrial being (as opposed to all the real ones) called A.L.F., otherwise known as Alien Life Form or Gordon Shumway depending on how well acquainted you are. Now, I've always felt an affinity towards ALF, as I too eat lots of pu- crack jokes to defuse awkward situations that I was probably also the cause thereof, but I'd heard so often about how his Master System tie-in (incongruously devised by American flight sim vets Nexa) was some hot garbo and required a level of patience that was beyond even the beleaguered family patriarch Willie Tanner. Actually, the only things I can recall of ALF now are the schmaltzy theme over those first-person opening credits and those depraved Andrew Hussie edits from back in the early days of YouTube, so I don't suppose playing this is going to ruin much in the way of childhood memories that weren't already deeply compromised. Either way, I guess I'm down for collecting 100 ALF Pogs or whatever other horrors this set will demand of me. I can take it.
Do the Germans have a word for when you start playing a game and have this gut feeling that you'll be seeing all of it again someday on Blight Club? Zukunftekrankheitenspiele? Well, if not, I believe just contributed to the collective German lexicon. You're welcome, Teutons. Yeah, so this game's trash. Although saying that I do have to wonder what possible form an ALF game could've taken that would've worked for the console market—point and click adventure game is the only genre that really fits a small guy whose main thing is that he's a smartass with no filter that causes messes everywhere he goes, and that's not the genre you make for the Master System—so I suppose the developers' hands were tied here to some extent. If they have a background in flight sims, maybe a retcon of his origin story where he's actually able to fly his UFO worth a damn and doesn't immediately crash into the Tanners' backyard? Circling back to that adventure game idea, that's largely what this is but with some additional platforming to break up the very basic inventory puzzles: we're sort of in Dizzy/Cosmic Spacehead territory here as a result, albeit not nearly as put together. It also has softlocks built in like classic Sierra (the game predates The Secret of Monkey Island and the rise of the no-fail-state LucasFilm era) where you can spend what limited money you're able to procure from selling off Lucky, the Tanner family cat, on the wrong piece of junk and be stuck forever. So that's cool. Otherwise you're more likely to follow the linear chain of items to trade around and lose all your lives on one of its inexcusable action sequences instead.
Much like ALF himself, the game is short but annoying, and yet with three lives and a single continue it's very very easy to hit a game over state long before you've reached the conclusion. As such, the fact this has an unreasonably high RA retro ratio for a benign licensed action-adventure game made more and more sense the more I played. If you were to peruse a guide on how to beat the game it would read like "get cat from kitchen surface, get salami from fridge, go into basement, use cat to chase away mouse, enter cave, get gold nugget, buy a key, enter a closet for the swimsuit, enter swimming hole, get treasure and pearl" etc. without mentioning that the basement cave trek involves fighting off lightning fast bats which can kill you from several feet away such is this game's hit detection, then dodging bikers and handsy weirdos on the way to the store for the key, or swim-juking your way past rapid-fire harpooners while diving for the treasure and pearl. As every death resets the current action stage it's pretty normal to hit the game over until you figure out the patterns and that enemies and bullets respawn almost immediately after they leave the screen. With all that in mind, I probably got about halfway through the game's progression before it all became too much to cope with and thus netted around half the achievements; the only ones that aren't progress-based are five no-death cheevos broken up in such a way to reward you for mastering each of the game's action sequences as well as a final screw you earned for beating the game without using that one continue. And so, even with plenty of achievements remaining to hit that desired 64%, I'll be saying ALFiedersehen to this terrible product. Oh hey, I'm speaking German again. This game just brings it out of me.
- Achievements: 15 (of 25) / 60% / RR: x5.23
Current Overall Achievement Completion (as of December): 74.27%
The Weeb Weeview
Another check-in as we move closer to the end of both an incredible year and an OK (in comparison to the strong summer and winter line-ups) autumn season of anime. Personal autumn highlights so far have definitely been the third season of Spy X Family, the second seasons of Ranma ½ and Campfire Cooking in Another World, and the back half of the hilarious Let This Grieving Soul Retire! along with the trio of new shows I talked about last time (May I Ask For One Final Thing?, A Wild Last Boss Appeared, and My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds That of the Hero's, just so you don't have to go back and check). This time I'm going to discuss another three new series that aren't quite so engaging to be this season's best but still absolutely within the realm of the recommendable, all of which are linked by being romantic comedies with a few unusual conceits.
Yano-kun's Ordinary Days
After last season's The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity, a show so wholesome it threatened to cause more diabetes than the male lead's family's bougie patisserie, Yano-kun's Ordinary Days provides a similar confectionery with its sweet but still emotionally grounded story of two obliviously naive highschoolers figuring out romantic relationships as the mutual attraction between them continues to blossom. Issue here is that the titular male lead Yano is extremely accident-prone: it's done nothing to lessen his sunny disposition but it does cause him both confidence issues and the slightly self-sabotaging belief that romantic happiness is for other, luckier people. The female lead, Yoshida, is your typically magnanimous class-rep type who finds herself drawn to Yano-kun's subtle charms as she fusses around with band-aids and disinfectants whenever he waltzes into class looking like he was attacked by every domestic animal and hedgerow he passed along the way. It's a very cute show that doesn't spend entire seasons on the "will they, won't they" aspect—spoilers, but they're effectively dating by the season's midpoint, even if neither is quite sure what that means yet—and the extended cast of supporters and potential rivals are all delightful human beings as well. It feels as if, since the entire world is causing Yano conflict, we're not getting so much of it from his fellow classmates and family members and it's just a genuinely sweet little HS romcom with a distinctively realistic (if conversely somewhat minimal) art style to help set it apart. We get at least one of these zero-stress love-ins per season and if that kind of show—which also includes the likes of My Dress-Up Darling, Dangers in My Heart, Skip and Loafer, Fragrant Flower, Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible, or the thematically similar Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie—appeals then this ought to as well.
Dusk Beyond the End of the World
Dusk started strong with its introduction of a cryogenically frozen character awakening to an unfamiliar future Japan that had seen some shit, putting it mildly, with civilization having been all but destroyed by a devastating internecine war with AI superintelligences. Not quite a Terminator situation but not far off either. The freshly awoken protagonist Akira is immediately concerned about Towasa, his stepsister and fiancée (oh boy), for several reasons: A), it's been 200 years since she saved his life by shuffling him into a stasis pod after he received grievous injuries and the chance she's survived all that time in some other pod somewhere is slim but not necessarily zero; and B), she also happened to be a robotics and AI genius who may have had something to do with the war that broke out and absolutely has something to do with the android that comes to Akira's rescue in the future, given their faces are identical. This android, Yugure, is also apparently madly in love in Akira and wants to get married post-haste, which has Akira at a loss: without confirming what happened to his fiancée he cannot fully commit to anyone else while some part of him is curious how an android might fall for him or, more's the point, why she was built to do so. Beyond the first episode where Yugure stylishly dispatches some thugs from the OWL organization—which has since united a fractured world under their not-so-benevolent rule—it's mostly been road trips across Japan and a whole lot of time spent discussing "ehlsea": a semi-formal polycule system that has surpassed monogamy as society's most prevalent form of romantic entanglement. So, from that action-packed intro, it's since felt more like a sci-fi romantic drama navigating a strange version of Japan with a strange version of how its people express their devotion, all the while chasing the mystery of this missing fiancée and her role in the current state of affairs (I suspect the show might pull a Fallout 4 and it turns out
Alma-chan Wants to Have a Family!
In a similar sci-fi robot love vein we have Alma-chan Wants to Have a Family. The titular Alma is actually A.L.M.A.—Autonomous Learning Military Android—a sapient AI weapons platform that resembles a preteen human girl which was devised and built in secret by genius, if somewhat disagreeable, scientists Enji Kamisato and Suzume Yobane, combining their respective rare talents in AI programming and robotic engineering. However, Alma is more curious about love and her technical status as a "daughter" than simulated weapons testing and is determined to light a fire out of the minuscule romantic sparks she perceives between her two creators (whom otherwise struggle to get along with each other's obnoxiously arrogant personalities). They agree to play the role of a family to make it easier to hide Alma in broad daylight, though they're somewhat less enthusiastic about maintaining the lovey-dovey act. So, like Spy X Family, it's one of these fake family scenarios that has the potential to become a real one as the relationships between the three leads continue to develop. It's also vaguely reminiscent of a much older manga/anime I was introduced to earlier this year, Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump, which also featured a childlike gynoid helping her romantically inexperienced scientist parent find love while cutting a swath through her peaceful town due to juvenile rambunctiousness. It's a combination of a slow-burn romance, entirely incapable parenting from two shut-in dorks who have no idea what they're doing outside of their professional disciplines, and some Pinocchio-esque fish-out-of-water humor as Alma learns how to be a real girl, but really the main objective of the show is to just be cute and affable. As I've said before, I've a bad habit with not really challenging myself with my anime picks. Still, though, when the state of the world is... all of this, maybe a few softballs in our entertainment isn't unwarranted.