Popular Post realm722 Posted September 6, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 6, 2022 Game: Neon Abyss Analysis: I bought Neon Abyss for $9.99 back in very late December 2021. The roguelike itch needed to be scratched since the last one I played was Hades back in early May! I will say this review is very exhaustive in detailing the journey to the platinum. If you just wanna jump straight to my observations, skip to "Bloat on Bloat". Why Neon Abyss? I can't quite recall if this is the first time I had heard about the game, but I can definitely remember that @Arcesius's review of the game was definitely the first time I had seen the game discussed for any meaningful length of time. Despite the fact he honestly gave the game a fairly poor review (2/5 enjoyment, 2/5 challenge) I really dug the neon-themed caricatures and figured I'd judge the game for myself the next time I saw it go on sale. I also imagined it'd serve as a decent challenge for an ultra rare as I've been slacking in that department since June. I was correct in some ways but ultimately concede that Arc was very accurate in a lot of his assessments. Getting My Bearings - Thanks to the glorious PSNProfiles guide creators @ninjaoffire200 and @Ac3dUd3-, I decided to play on Hard mode right from the very start so as to prepare myself for the absurd obstacle required in conquering "Ultimate Challenge". As we all know, you're expected to fail more often than you're expected to win in a roguelite. At least while you're learning the starting mechanics. One of the unique gimmicks to Neon Abyss is if you beat the game 6 consecutive times on hard mode (which in and of itself would be absurd if not for a key loophole I'll mention in a bit), is borderline damn impossible unless you devote several hundreds of hours to this game, and even then, RNG could bend you over and show you the 50 states. Once you do that, and only then, will you unlock Abyssal Difficulty. Enemies move even faster and their projectiles are launched out at breakneck pace. THIS was the trophy I decided to start aiming for from the very start. I figured it'd be the biggest pain in the ass of the entire trophy hunting experience and I was correct in that judgment. After spending the first 14-15 runs to learn the mechanics, I started to beat Argus(5th level boss), then Hal(6th level boss), and finally Zeus(7th level boss) which meant I could start aiming for Ares/Athena who are optional 8th level bosses you can fight if you devote yourself to their respective shrines. Did I pull it off? You bet your ass I did! Here's the video. The "Basketball Jersey" representing Kobe Bryant's #24 is probably the most clutch item in the entire game as it halves all damage lost from level 5 onwards. The Loophole That Made All That Possible - As with most roguelikes, there is a glitch/loophole that allows you to drastically lower the difficulty of the game by giving you an infinite number of retries on a run if you just so happen to keep dying over and over to a specific room or boss and would like to practice until you get great at it. Neon Abyss saves at the start of every new level you descend. This means that if you lose a ton of health in a room, let's say 3-4 hearts, and played poorly - all you have to do is quit out to the menu, reboot up the game, and you'll be placed back to the start of the level with your original health fully intact. This allows you to do "trial" runs through an entire map level to see where everything is located from the boss to key item rooms. I abused this to hell and back. I cannot imagine how rare this platinum would be without it. Likely <1%. I will defend myself and say I do NOT believe it completely trivializes the challenge of the game. The enemies hit hard as hell and move at lightning pace on Hard & Abyssal difficulty. You need to be good enough to not have them drain all of your health before a boss fight and that requires proper skill especially if the boss room is located far away from the entrance. There's also the "Dark Souls runback" effect of every time you die or nearly die at the boss and reset, you need to make your way back there, and that in and of itself can be a frustrating ordeal as opposed to the loophole in a game like Dead Cells which puts you right back to the boss fight if you so choose. Satisfied with my success of nabbing the hardest trophy, I then took a 10+ day hiatus to play some shorter games so all of August wasn't lost to this title. This is quite rare for me to do with a roguelike as I typically binge them hardcore until I've rubbed them down to a nub but... Neon Abyss has some special qualities that I'll cover a bit further down. Going for "Action Supremacist", "Pro Gamer", & "Safety First" - The great thing about taking the break away from the game when I did is that all the trophies I had left remaining could be obtained on Easy difficulty. The first of these required beating the 5th level boss, Argus, without acquiring any items. In fact, here's the wiki page to the Neon Abyss items page. You're going to want to bookmark that page and have it open as a tab on your phone or computer as you play as for whatever reason, the developers think this is 2011 with The Binding of Isaac all over again and somehow believe not including item descriptions is a good idea. It was a cakewalk. The game on Easy after playing on Hard/Abyssal difficulty even with over a week away from the game felt like I was playing the game on baby mode and the enemies were moving in slow motion. The bosses MELT under the heat of your bullets even with crappier weapons that weren't viable for the hard mode runs. Pro Gamer asks the player to defeat the 6th level boss, Hal, without taking any damage. This is kinda annoying if you don't find the boss room early in level 6 as if you do fail, you'll always have to re-do the runback if you goof up. I thankfully stumbled into it while going for the "I'm Fine" trophy which basically asks you to win a run with R6. Finally, the last truly laboriously challenging trophy asks you to complete a run without taking damage a SINGLE time. Thankfully, there's a way to make this far easier on yourself. Boot up Save Slot #2 from the main menu and you can make it so you only have to defeat Argus on Level #5 to "finish" the run as the latter bosses haven't been unlocked yet. This run may 2-3 hours worth of reloading as even on Easy difficulty, a stupid worm enemy may hit you with a piss missile from across the map and all of a sudden you gotta re-do the entire level all over again. The Argus fight itself also has some weird hit detection with its lasers that I never quite figured out despite investing 30 hours into the game. Still, all this stuff is a breeze compared to the Hard/Abyssal difficulty grind and I quite enjoyed the leisurely pace as the cracks that appear in the game on higher skill levels soften when you play it more casually. As this is a roguelike, I'd be remiss if I didn't include my favorite weapons and skills as I've done for Going Under, Dead Cells, and so forth. My Favorite Items/Weapons in Neon Abyss: (Weapon) (Meteor) - One of the best guns in the entire game. Shoots out a fleet of crystals. Also had it pop like 5 runs in a row for me lol (Weapon) (Soul Bringer) - Just a devastating laser that deals constant melee damage. Particularly devastating on bosses. (Weapon) (Light Dancer) - I personally loved this oen even if it was awkward as hell to maneuver sometimes. With multiple bullet upgrades, it's mental! (Item) (Basketball Jersey) - Single-handedly carried me for multiple hard mode runs. Go from losing 1 heart on level 5 and beyond to just half a heart. (Item) (Divinity) - Almost always found at Athena's shrine, it gives you permanent flight and damn near breaks the game with how OP it is (Item) (Forbidden Mask) - Auto pick up. The # of times I sacrificed a heart at the temple of Ares just to gain one right back with this item is hilarious. (Item) (Immortal Heart) - Only found it once in 50+ legit runs of the game. If you ever do find it, PICK IT UP! Remaining Miscallenous Trophies - With the "complete a run with X qualifier" challenges out of the way, my remaining time spent with the game was just about casually checking off various tasks like finding 99 secret rooms or playing the roulette machine 99 times. I'd highly recommend checking these out before playing as you can prioritize which ones you wanna unlock and that way you can start advancing in your progress in them while going for some of the meatier challenges. Thankfully, the game makes it super easy to grind out trophies such as "Piano Virtuoso" as while you may have unlocked a lot of mini-games from the bartender while tryna unlock all the characters, the game lets you TURN THEM OFF from the bartender if you go ask. This meant I could make it so every time a mini-game showed up on a level, it'd always be the piano challenge. Once I scooped up every one of these random trophies left, I let myself die over and over until I reached 99 times (I was at like 36 when I started) and thanks to @iGGTheEnd being a freaking legend and offering this nifty tip to grind "Abyss Veteran" (999x are you freaking kidding me developers get outta here), I managed to pop the trophy in 20 minutes. I earned the 3.57% rarity platinum in 3 weeks and 23 hours and landed as the 34th fastest plat popper and that's WITH a 10+ day hiatus thrown in the middle! Far too much of the review has been bogged down in the roadmap to the actual platinum which is why I'd like to dedicate the final portion of the review to some of the many shortcomings the game suffers from despite liking a lot of what it's trying to do. Bloat on Bloat - I mentioned in the previous section how dumb it was that the developers decided not to include item descriptions in the game and instead force any players who want to know what the hell they're picking up to have a wiki tab open on some device. Hell, they have a bloody item in the game JUST TO DO THAT. The more I thought about it... the more a sinister line of thinking began to overwhelm me. Neon Abyss is utterly plagued with garbage, useless, items. There is so much CRAP on the item tier log that it's either so niche it may as well be completely unviable for 95% of most runs or so repetitive/similar that they essentially reskinned tens of items over and over again. So many that are jump mark specific, or if you don't hatch an egg you have a % chance at attaining a key or grenade, or a trillion iterations of bombs that I see no purpose in the majority of combat scenarios. By adding item descriptions, it would show just how worthless so many "rewards" in the game actually are. Of course, this criticism isn't unique to Neon Abyss. I've seen it said about The Binding of Isaac. Hell, I've seen it used as a frequent criticism of the roguelite genre in general. But the more you dig, the more I think Neon Abyss suffers from this phenomenon. As a credit to Veewow Games, they are still adding to the content to the game as of September 2022. The Cornucopia update came to the game in mid-August just as I started the game. But I think this continues to show more of the side effects of where the developers are placing their attention. They added two "new" bosses in Cursed Ares and Cursed Athena. They're just normal Ares/Athena but a little harder. They've stuffed the game full of mini-games and mini-rewards in each room that are just small tweaks in and of themselves on a specific formula. I found the gun variety to be lacking. There are so many systems I didn't even bother learning. The specialty on each weapon was hardly used by me. I think the melee system is completely unviable on harder difficulties and question why it was even added other than to give players a way to break open crates. There are so many characters to unlock yet I never deviated from Anna just because I liked the fact she had 4 hearts which meant I could take an extra two hits on levels 1-4 and an extra hit on levels 5-8. There's a collection token system for unique collectible cards and a crystals mechanic you can spend over and over it just goes on and on and on and I imagine it's great for those who love the game in its current state but I think Neon Abyss missed the forest for the trees. Neon Abyss is Paper Thin in Key Aspects - Any roguelite worth its salt knows how pivotal the sensation of "game feel" is to its replayability. Dead Cells has mastered it with the downward smash and rolling through doors. Enter the Gungeon (which I think VERY obviously inspired the devs at Veewow Games I mean come on it's practically slapping you in the face) has its iconic dodge roll and fun flipping table mechanics. Risk of Rain 2 invites players to make as broken a build as possible before breaking the player's back at the unending hordes it'll siege upon you. Here's my question - what's Neon Abyss one great trait? The thing above all else that stands out?......... I don't think it exists. I think the fact the game lacks a proper dodge for invincibility frames is a huge indictment. You can strafe right to left and jump but this is probably one of the most mobility-limiting roguelites I've ever played. Something else that bothered ms is that when visiting the basement, I noticed I had not seen 3/4 of the items OR even half the weapons... yet when I went to the "enemies" section of the display, I had seen 74/74 shockingly early on. The game has a painful lack of enemy variety in comparison to other departments. I think the lack of creativity with bosses mentioned earlier is evidence of this. I also found it annoying how often the game brings itself to a screeching halt on higher difficulties. There are these annoying worm enemies that can tuck and hide appearing in and out of the walls after shooting a piddly missile and due to the size of some rooms, it can take you far longer than you'd like to kill one of them long after the real challenge of the room is done. Making the player wait sucks. It sucks extra hard in a game you'd like to play fast and loose such as in Neon Abyss. I think it's partially why so many weapons fell flat for me. I don't wanna hold down the button waiting for my weapon to fire dammit. Despite these deep, fundamental problems with the game, the developers keep building on top of it like it's the house outta What Remains of Edith Finch. Some Novel Concepts I Liked - While I think Neon Abyss suffers in a lot of the core aspects that make roguelites so enjoyable for me, I couldn't help but be impressed by some concepts I've never seen experimented with in titles of this ilk. 1) I really like Abyssal Difficulty in theory. But make it 3 wins instead. That way a properly good player could have a crack at it without cheating. I'd like to see an "extreme" difficulty in a bunch of these titles, just for the diehards. 2) I really like the "ban weapon/item/enemy" concept. You can ban up to 5 items/weapons from ever appearing again and also swap out specific enemies you hate so they never appear again. I honestly love this. It's not such a high number you can break the difficulty but I got rid of those ANNOYING ass bear enemies that felt like they were bullet sponges from a couple of piss diddly ones and felt like a genius whenever I see those swaps paying dividends later in runs. 3) I love the way the game handles currency. Want to min/max coins? You better stomp out killed enemy worms and start racking up those bronze 1's as before you'll know it they could add up and be the difference maker between a golden or dead run if you can get a clutch item at a shop. I also appreciate the "slot machines" to enter mini-games that have a random probability that can spice up a run. 4) I really dig the challenge rooms where if you complete them perfectly, you can get a gun upgrade such as faster attack speed or more bullets and I felt myself constantly going back and forth whether I felt comfortable enough with my current gear to not lose too many hearts for the challenge to be worth it. 5) The game has a fun aesthetic. The nightclub boss dialogue is a bit needless and too meta for my tastes but I love the dance floor and lathering your game in purple is an objectively smart decision based on my gaming tastes. Would I recommend Neon Abyss? Probably not. For the majority of players, the game is going to lack that addictive, oh so elusive "game feel" that too many other roguelites already have in abundance for me to recommend this one ahead of them. If you're an absolute diehard roguelike connesseuir, there may be something for you here but I'd proceed with precaution. Perhaps check out a YouTube let's play or two and see if simply shooting and moving is enough to satisfy your lizard brain tastes. In a way, I'm still really glad I played the game. The developers, Veewo Games are a studio based out of Xiamen, China. I love playing games from non-Western studios since you can get a pulse on how drastically different the landscape over there may be for games compared to here. Ultimately, I think it suffers from the fact roguelites have kept growing, evolving, and learning from their early days and Neon Abyss feels like it would have been a gigantic hit.... in 2012. I noted the datedness in Rogue Legacy when I platinumed it back in March. I still hope the team is doing well financially and would love to get a taste of their next game since they did enough here to impress me in the micro that with a bit better tuning, they can have a real bonafide hit on their hands with their next idea. Until then! Panda Score: 6.8 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 6.2 / 10 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted September 12, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 12, 2022 (edited) Game: Super Time Force Ultra Analysis: I bought this game for $2.99 in very late May 2022 and boy do you want to talk about a pleasant surprise! Why Super Time Force Ultra? Honestly, much like Mark of the Ninja, StfW is another game that beat me into submission after popping up so highly under PlatPrices "Opencritic Score" sorting during a sale. Take a look at the front page of all games that aren't hidden for me, and you'll see it shows up on the 1st page with an 89 rating! This is particularly noteworthy given the company surrounding it. Bloodborne, Persona 5, Marvel's Spider-Man, etc... and then this tiny indie game that I had never heard of is also, somehow, one of its peers? I saw it had been available on PS+ back in 2015 which likely inflated its overall platinum rarity but was still put off for a while due to being <3%. Eventually I decided to dive in headfirst and man the developers over at Capybara Games are damn good at what they do! The Gameplay Loop - The general concept of the game is quite simple. You're led by Commander Repeatski. Your squad has the ability to manipulate time and intervene from alternate timelines in order to complete various missions. Typically, these involve saving the world during time periods due to a variety of invasions / mass global devastations. You are given 60 seconds to complete a level by getting through various enemies and platforming challenges and occasionally having to takedown a mini-boss or two in the process. In reality, you have more time than 60 seconds as there are various clock collectibles that add time to your run, shards you can shoot to slow down time immensely, and rewind shenanigans with multiple characters that can rapidly speed you through a level. The actual levels themselves aren't too challenging and can be flown through if you aren't bothering to scoop up all the collectibles. Super Time Force Ultra is rare in the sense it uses a "lives" system in the modern gaming era, but most levels give you 30+ lives to sort through with more that can be obtained by scooping up Glorbs of which there are 10 in each level. I'll say this - the game is extremely fun to play and makes collectibles a fun secondary target to aim for while not making them completely pointless or mindless. You see, a lot of times in levels, glorbs aren't just buried away or some corner or intend to distract from the main mission. Sometimes you'll find sparkling enemies which indicate if you kill them, a glorb will pop out. There's a minor secondary challenge where you need to kill the enemy and figure out what to position your character immediately upon their death in order to collect the glorb before it hits the ground and "breaks" which means you need to rewind in order to catch it in mid-air. With how smooth and quick rewinding in the game is, I never found this tedious and thought ir appropriately extended the time you spend in each level as if you're just blazing through trying to reach the end, you can get there super quickly (as I'll cover in the Super Hardcore Mode) A Fun Challenge - The purpose of collecting glorbs is not just for 100% completion or a trophy, as they also unlock "Helladeck Levels" of which there are 50 in total. These are especially unique as they provoke problem-solving within the player to try and collect the glorbs within the limited timeframe and lives available. I saved these for the end of my 1st play-through, but honestly, you'd probably be better served playing them as you gradually progress through the main campaign. You'll need to find a distinct character in each zone (of which there are 6 in total, 16 total playable characters) but I honestly learned a ton regarding the mechanics of each character that I sort of underestimated. Some of the latter ones can get tricky but there are great aids for them on YouTube. I think the worst one for me was easily Level #37 as I had no idea Jef Leppard could launch himself off the ground with his own bomb and the angled launch on the moving platform was a gigantic pain in the ass for me since aiming directionally can be a bit cumbersome but with enough stubborn persistence, you'll eventually get it. I'll make a bold statement here. This game is not ACTUALLY ultra rare difficult. You should try it. It's honestly 10-12% plat rarity. The game can be completed in less than 15 hours (I did it in 12), is never overly difficult, and the Super Hardcore Mode is honestly quite feasible with all 16 characters unlocked. The quirk of the mode is if you die as a character, you cannot play as them again unless you save them with another character. Some characters are quite poor but I found that a rotation of Re-Bot, Cleo, Melanie Gibson, Sir Galahad, Aimy McKillen, and the real MVP, Shuhei Yoshida (that tweet super move is downright broken) was enough to carry me to the finish line and devastate most bosses. I earned the 2.37% rarity platinum in 2 days and 23 minutes Would I recommend Super Time Force Ultra? Absolutely! While it's not a personal fan favorite or classic for me, sometimes you need to just play a damn good quality title and StfW is precisely that. Lean, brisk, and with all the fat trimmed, you're talking about a fundamentally sound game with a good gameplay loop and self-aware enough to make a fun and goofy story that pokes fun at itself within the dialogue. I'm also a bit more intrigued to checkout "Below" as while it's an extreme departure from 2D Pixel platforming run-and-gunning fun, the folks over at Capybara clearly know what they're doing and I'm always curious to see how a studio evolves after dropping their first hit title. I'd also love to give a little shoutout to @YaManSmevz for unintentionally giving me some extra motivation to finally play the game after it was sitting on the back burner for the past few months. Seeing them complete it in a handful of days gave me the inspiration I needed to finally check it out. This now marks a rare back-to-back ultra-rare games completed for me in the month of September and we'll see if I'm able to pull off the dream of completing 12 in one year as I'm slightly past the halfway point with (7) with a handful of months left to go. Until next time! Panda Score: 7.67 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.7 / 10 Edited September 12, 2022 by realm722 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted September 12, 2022 Share Posted September 12, 2022 1 hour ago, realm722 said: Game: Super Time Force Ultra Aww hell yeah!! I'm so glad you played this one (and enjoyed it, and wrote about it)! I too found this to be a real pleasant surprise? 1 hour ago, realm722 said: I saved these for the end of my 1st play-through, but honestly, you'd probably be better served playing them as you gradually progress through the main campaign. You'll need to find a distinct character in each zone (of which there are 6 in total, 16 total playable characters) but I honestly learned a ton regarding the mechanics of each character that I sort of underestimated. Some of the latter ones can get tricky but there are great aids for them on YouTube. I think the worst one for me was easily Level #37 as I had no idea Jef Leppard could launch himself off the ground with his own bomb and the angled launch on the moving platform was a gigantic pain in the ass for me since aiming directionally can be a bit cumbersome but with enough stubborn persistence, you'll eventually get it. Facts. And... 1 hour ago, realm722 said: I'll make a bold statement here. This game is not ACTUALLY ultra rare difficult. You should try it. It's honestly 10-12% plat rarity. FACTS. I wish I'd done the Helladecks as I went along too, learning mechanics of seemingly whatever characters was huge. Plus it definitely sharpened my STFU skills! I feel like the Helladeck levels had like three or four where all the real challenge went to. I'd be flying and then hit one like #37 as you mentioned, and be like "well how the fuck..." I daresay that is not a bold statement at all! I agree full-heartedly. And trust, with my average ass gaming skills, that's saying somethin! 1 hour ago, realm722 said: I'd also love to give a little shoutout to @YaManSmevz for unintentionally giving me some extra motivation to finally play the game after it was sitting on the back burner for the past few months. Seeing them complete it in a handful of days gave me the inspiration I needed to finally check it out. This now marks a rare back-to-back ultra-rare games completed for me in the month of September and we'll see if I'm able to pull off the dream of completing 12 in one year as I'm slightly past the halfway point with (7) with a handful of months left to go. Until next time! Panda Score: 7.67 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.7 / 10 Thanks for the shout mah G, a great read like always. And good luck with the UR goal dude, you got this? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 Super Time Force Ultra is definitely one of the EASIER ultra rare platinums. Had a lot of fun with it. Love the retro throwbacks in the game. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted September 16, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 16, 2022 If the Joy Slips From My Writing, Take Me Behind the Barn We're in the thick of September and for anyone in the good ol' USA worth their salt, you'd know it's football season! I typically try to keep my sports references on here to a minimum. There are a few reasons for that. 1) Video game players on a forum as niche as this one tend to not care for sports. I have no doubt some enjoy any one of NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, Soccer, Tennis, or Golf but I've found in my personal, biased, anecdote-riddled experience that gamers can be a lil too antagonistic towards athletics that I just prefer to steer clear of any llamas. 2) My sports teams tend to perform poorly and when they do I like to not think of them. The Heat are the one exception to this rule. The Dolphins haven't won a playoff game in 20 years. The Marlins have made one postseason in the last 15(in a pandemic-shortened year at that!). The Panthers... have had good regular seasons and typically implode come the summer. At least we finally won a playoff series this past campaign. I also enjoy football(soccer, call it what you want man it's your life) and root for Real Madrid who also bring me great joy but as it's hard to watch many La Liga matches I almost exclusively get to watch games live when they're in the Champions League (which they've thankfully dominated for the better part of the last decade). Still, this is easily my greatest passion aside from games. They're tied. I couldn't pick one over the other. I consume them both in the traditional fashion (playing games, watching sports) as well as to an obsessed/hardcore degree. (Listening to sports/games podcasts, reading articles, watching film analysis and critiques of each) which brings me to the side tangent of this article. I don't think I've ever enjoyed sports coverage less than I do right now. I tried to figure out what it was. It's not that I'm enjoying sports less. I have been devouring every nook and cranny that's dripped from the Dolphins this offseason and watched 7 straight hours of football this Sunday and enjoyed every minute of it. The same applies for basketball and soccer. It's not that my teams themselves have performed worse than usual and have broken my spirit. I've toughed out a 1-15 Dolphins abomination, the post-LeBron Hassan Whiteside/Dion Waiters-led Heat squads, and the Marlins trading away future MVP Christian Yelich for Lewis bloody Brinson. So what is it? It's this plague of sports gambling seeping its tentacles into every outlet of sports discussion. The NFL partnered with the likes of FanDuel and DraftKings on deals worth nearly $1 billion dollars. You don't have to be a sports fan to know those websites as their vigorous marketing would make the ad team over at Raid Shadow Legends weep. You cannot throw a stone in the ocean that is the sports world without stumbling upon a blowhard gambling "expert" or the over/under on Hawai/Fresno State. I don't know if gambling should be legal or not. I don't care if others gamble. I do think we're probably going to start seeing the consequences of this on young male demographics in the next decade given how prevalent it's becoming in every aspect of coverage to the point they're even mentioning it on public telecasts and pregame shows. Proponents of it love it. "It brings in more revenue!" OR "The sport is growing even bigger and more popular because of it!" That's fine. I understand if everybody's wearing blue I'm the freak for wearing red. I have never gambled on sports. I have never even been in a fantasy football league. I don't care for the supplementary elements that supposedly "add enjoyment" to sports watching for others. I get quite enough just enjoying the spectacle without worrying about my mortgage payment being dependent upon Dame hitting a buzzer beater. All of this makes me sound like a curmudgeon, but it goes even deeper than that. Does anyone in the public sports analysis space convey their enjoyment when analyzing it now? Please pay attention to the boldened underlined, italicized, vegetabled word of that sentence. Does anyone convey the joy they get as part of their sports analysis? John Madden passed away this past December and there was an outpouring of love for him both for being an excellent head coach winning a Super Bowl with the Raiders but also for being a phenomenal sports commentator whose enthusiasm in the booth overwhelmed you when his jaw dropped over Cowboys guard Larry Allen preventing a pick-6 on Monday Night Football. Now, what do we have? For some more niche followers of the sport, there's PFF. A football-focused website dedicated to going deep on the NFL with analytics and trying to find the edge of matchups while also offering their oh-so-not-so controversial PFF grades each week. I have listened to an ungodly amount of videos on their channel. I know all the main analysts' names. Steve, Sam, Eric, George, Matt, Kevin & Trevor. I think I've started to resent them. While their coverage can be enlightening(and its the only reason I still listen), they far too often sound soulless. The PFF Forecast after a Sunday full of games is particularly sapping. Trevor tries to bring energy but to me, it sounds like he's been asked to convey zeal or else Cris Collinsworth is going to make his family disappear. Kevin Clark covers football like a robot wearing human skin. I still listen because my options elsewhere are so minimal. Debate shows on ESPN and FS1 are vapid and formulaic at this point. (SAS uses a word like hornswoggle while Sharp shrieks Skiuuuup). I find Bill Simmons to be okay as he was talking about gambling over a decade ago and is a bit of a baffoon, but his analysis is always surface level. I enjoy Le Batard Show for the laughs but understand I learn less about the sport by listening to them. I think my two favorites in terms of the main line sports are Ryen Russillo who sounds like one of the remarkably few who still loves and watches games for the purity of the sport and Zach Lowe who does the same but manages to do so in such a wholesome yet articulate manner that you can't help but learn a thing or two regarding the intricacies of basketball. They stand out to me given how difficult is it to NOT find someone caring about the Rams being -10 at home. This diatribe against public sports coverage now circles back to video games, and the title of this article. If in enough consecutive reviews I begin to convey a lethargicness, droning, or worst of all, apathetic tone... put me out of my misery. In an effort to avoid all llamas, I'll be vague. Occasionally I read enough reviews of games from certain voices and begin to think to myself: "Does this person even enjoy their time playing video games?". This typically comes through when the review reads as overwhelmingly negative. OR tepid enjoyment at best but the bulkiest paragraphs are dedicated to some annoying aspect of grinding for a specific trophy. Let me be clear. I'm not asking for people to not be negative regarding games. Hell, some aspects of critiquing games can be greatly enjoyable during the review process! I loved breaking down in my head what was lacking in Neon Abyss and trying to convey that in my writing. This could also manifest itself by someone ranting about a horrible time they had with a game but by transmitting that "suffering" in a humorous fashion, it makes it a worthwhile experience. This is something I'm going to be conscious of going forward. Am I playing too many 6/10s and throwing up one too many bland and undercooked reviews? If I am, I NEED to change something. God forbid I sound like the video game reviewing equivalent of a PFF analyst. Thankfully, I can say I'm greatly enjoying my time with games at the moment and think I've played a bunch of fantastic varied titles this year. Hell, I'll admit that for as much enjoyment as I get from playing I almost get the same thrill from knowing I have a gargantuan article to type up. This has probably been the least video gamey yet most link-filled write-up yet. Forgive me! 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 6 hours ago, realm722 said: If the Joy Slips From My Writing, Take Me Behind the Barn Is it weird that one of my takeaways is "the amount of people saying "jif" is 30%?" I was at a San Diego bar recently and a Padres fan was talking shit to me. I noticed the Marlins were losing, and couldn't help thinking "they haven't been doing so hot in recent years... but they still have two more championships than the Padres." I'm sorry, I don't know if that helps, but between that and Alcántara you're in a better spot than many! I can't say I share the dismay, but I see where you're coming from. Lots of peeps who should just be happy that their team won are disappointed about the spread, and sports YouTubers I like are having to stop and pitch MyBookie or DraftKings more and more. I don't mind gambling, but I definitely agree that that shouldn't be the focus. That's how I feel about people who go to baseball games just to get drunk and start shit? Well that's not entirely true, I DO mind that! 6 hours ago, realm722 said: This is something I'm going to be conscious of going forward. Am I playing too many 6/10s and throwing up one too many bland and undercooked reviews? If I am, I NEED to change something. God forbid I sound like the video game reviewing equivalent of a PFF analyst. You got nothin to worry about homie, you're a far ways from that, I promise you? Sorry, I just kinda started writing and now I have all these words here, I hope any of this makes sense! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 6 hours ago, realm722 said: If the Joy Slips From My Writing, Take Me Behind the Barn ------- This diatribe against public sports coverage now circles back to video games, and the title of this article. If in enough consecutive reviews I begin to convey a lethargicness, droning, or worst of all, apathetic tone... put me out of my misery. Since I am as interested about sports as I am about learning Mongolian throat singing, I'll just keep it brief - I doubt you'll come close to apathy when it comes to writing about videogames Excited? yes. Angry? maybe. Rarity? Under 40% ? Since most of your posts fuel my addiction to coffee (love reading your stuff in the morning, whenever you're posting), I'll make sure to let you know if I feel any "meh/10" coming from you 6 hours ago, realm722 said: This is something I'm going to be conscious of going forward. Am I playing too many 6/10s and throwing up one too many bland and undercooked reviews? If I am, I NEED to change something. I do admit I did feel this about some of the latest games that I've played (see Nickelodeon All-Star Brawling, a game so bland that it made me start the Elden Ring challenge run just so I can confirm that I am alive and not phased out of existence due to boredom). But, writing had to be done..not a fun experience. At least that experience made me realize that yeah...I should avoid those dreaded 5/10 at all costs a weird motivation to hunt for better games! Also...I did randomly click on some of your tags, because that blue thing is appealing... 6 hours ago, realm722 said: This could also manifest itself by someone ranting about a horrible time they had with a game but by transmitting that "suffering" in a humorous fashion, it makes it a worthwhile experience. Is that PTSD that I am spotting? ? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted September 18, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 18, 2022 (edited) Game: Team Sonic Racing Analysis: I did not buy the game, but rather got it for free as it became available for PS+ Users in March of 2022. Why Team Sonic Racing? I've been on an ultra-rare hunting kick as of late having beaten Neon Abyss & Super Time Force Ultra and wanted a game in my backlog that was relatively mindless. I didn't want to have to learn a bunch of intricate new systems or have to detract from a podcast/video/music playlist in the case I needed to listen to any story elements. Nothing fit the definition better for a tough yet straightforward challenge than a kart racing game. I've only played one racing game this entire year in Wreckfest which was... fine. The last time I played a proper kart racer was Mario Kart Wii in 2012ish? You can say its been a minute. I was also curious to discover just how challenging the game was since there was a bit of controversy surrounding the trophy guide attached to the list. Some alleged the guide creator minimized the difficulty at a 4/10 when in reality it was a 6 or 7 out of 10. The time at 20 hours also seemed to underestimate the required investment in order to obtain the platinum. The dispute amused me enough to use myself as a measuring stick for both parties' claims. A Fundamentally Solid Racer - While a kart racing game built around Sonic characters is fine in its own right, the folks over at Sumo Digital wanted to do something a bit different from the formula of simply copy-and-pasting a generic kart racer with characters from a kid-friendly IP. Those already exist in the form of Crash Team Racing, Nickelodeon Kart Racers, & Garfield Kart. Team Sonic Racing separates itself by making you race in a team of 3 alongside two companions in an effort to take down other squads. Such as Sonic, Tails, & Knuckles vs. Amy, Chao & Big, vs. Shadow, Rogue, & Robotnik, etc... This is implemented in gameplay in a number of ways. Get hit by a projectile? Your teammate can swing past you and offer a boost to get you back up to speed. You can slingshot off their momentum and rocket ahead to cover vast distances if you ever get caught behind. Of course, now that you're racing as a team, your own final pole position won't determine if your team comes off as the victors. You get 15pts for 1st, 12pts for 2nd, 10pts for 3rd, and diminishing returns by 1 from there all the way to 12th. Let me be as direct as possible. You will inevitably finish 1st in a race and end up LOSING the competition due to the fact Tails & Knuckles were jerking each other off for the final lap as Team Green or whatever secured 2nd, 3rd, & 4th place. Did this happen frequently? NO. I probably lost less than a dozen races due to a complete failure by my teammates. I would honestly find it hilarious at times and think: "were you eating dogsh!t Knuckles how the hell do you finish a FULL 30 SECONDS after the 11th placed racer?" For as frustrating as those moments may be, Tails bailed my ass out a lot when I'd get hit with a wisp and lose all momentum only for him to come swooping in at the opportune time and get me right back into the thick of things. The racing itself is sublime. Drifting feels fantastic. I love how you can get an extra boost by doing tricks after jumps, and the 3 levels of red, pink, to neon blue boost were a fun little challenge to try and min/max each little edge wherever I could get it. Surprisingly Hard, Fun, Yet Fair Side Challenges - Aside from the four different racing events (Team, Grand Prix, Survival, & Showdown), there are also some unique activities tossed into the Team Adventure Mode that were an absolute blast and posed a sizable foe for all those who desire 100% completion. Traffic Attack is probably the worst of these as all it asks of the player is to drive through a certain number of finishes before time runs out while avoiding debris in the form of swaying traffic cones on the course. It's fine and not too hard. Eggpawn Assault is by far the easiest and essentially asks you to hang back and snipe foes in a timely manner while watching the clock and making sure you always have enough to carry you to the next opportunity to attack. Destruction was initially quite challenging for me as the added drift element to earn extra points kept making me regret using projectiles in front of me as I wouldn't earn bonus points. Then I realized you're incentivized to just shoot the projectiles behind you and they can takeout targets all the same. Ring Challenge was a pain in the ass, particularly for the one on Sky Road and the ridiculous "collect 400 coins in one drift" key but once I switched to Rogue and upgraded her handling as high as possible, I found it to be far more doable. Make sure you use a technique character. Finally, Daredevil was far and away my favorite challenge even if it's honestly also the hardest. The exhilaration over trying to get as close to a star post as possible without hitting WHILE drifting is pure bliss when you pull it off to perfection. Make sure you always drift on the red side to keep up that 1.5x multiplier, avoid hitting anything, and you'll earn it in no time. These side challenges while difficult at first (especially for the platinum medals on some of them) provided a great variety from the expected racing events and greatly added to my enjoyment while playing. How To Win Every Time - I've seen it said that Hard/Expert difficulty can be utterly ruthless in the game and can lead to many attempts on the same track over and over again if you don't figure out the formula for success. I'm here to spell out what worked for me. You may find differing advice elsewhere so take it with a grain of salt. 1) Always play as a speed character, max out top speed. I used Sonic for almost every event outside of technique characters for daredevil competitions. Use your mod pods to get credits for performance parts. 2) Take advantage of the start line boost each race. It's super easy to pull off. R2 just before the "3, 2, 1" pops up. This can grant you some much-needed separation from the pack early on. 3) Drift often for boosts on turns, spam tricks in the air. Rarely should you ever be straight driving (not holding R2) except on straightaways. 4) Slingshot & item transfer always. This builds up your team ultimate and you should ALWAYS transfer an item to build that meter up unless it's particularly opportune(a projectile with a 1st place racer right in front of you) 5) SAVE YOUR TEAM ULTIMATE. There is an exception to this rule. Team Ultimate is an invincible form you can unlock for a period of several seconds. If you earn it while on 1/3 or early 2/3 of the competition, you'll be able to earn 2nd Team Ultimate before the end. Hence, use it early. If you earn it midway through lap 2/3, SAVE IT. Why? There are only two ways opposing racers can stop you from running away with an easy victory if you get an early, sizable lead. 1) Lightning wisp. 2) Stupid rocks wisp. I found, to an almost comedic effect, these assaults ALWAYS happened on the 3rd lap. If you're left vulnerable without a team ultimate, you can get stunlocked to an unfortunate degree and finish in 9th place after leading for most of the match. By comparison, look at how I save my Team Ultimate for the end here and time it beautifully to catch 1st place while blowing past the impenetrable rock blockade. I found with these 5 tips, I never lost while cleaning up the remaining races and found my way to breezing to podium placements for the remainder of my time with the game. Okay, Let's Talk About The Bad - I've been very positive about the game as I enjoyed my time with it. That doesn't mean there aren't some inexplicitly abysmal design decisions. 1) @AJ_Radio is correct. Grand Prix events are horrible. Let's be honest. They're ONLY here to pad the run time of the game. They offer nothing distinct to team races. I have never felt MORE like 2018 LeBron than dragging Tails and Knuckles dogwater asses to the precipice of a championship only for them to crap the bed on the final lap of the 4th race and finish in 9th and 12th place. To make matters worse, the way they're unlocked is incomprehensible. I needed to play on Normal in order to ensure I earned the Key associated with each prix. Yet if you do that, you have to play on Hard to unlock Expert. There are 6 Grand Prix. 6 x 4 x 3 = 72 races. That's assuming you NEVER lose one and have to reset from the beginning. It's awful. Shame on the person who thought of them. 2) The entire concept of the "A Friend In Speed Is A Friend Indeed" trophy. You have to beat somebody on your friends' list time trial. Simple right? Except for the fact the time trials DO NOT LET YOU SORT BY YOUR FRIENDS TIMES. It sorts from the leaderboard. This is such a cruel, almost comedically twisted trophy. You have to either decide whether you wanna bust your gut to beat a ridiculously good time trial or spend the better part of half an hour to find your secondary accounts mediocre time. I opted for the latter. After 29 minutes and 55 seconds of nonstop scrolling, I found my 1:27:187 time trial score placed 10,094th on Sky Road. I personally beat it with 1:27:170. If you ever want to get this trophy and are willing to scroll, befriend me on PSN and say that's all you want it for is to do the trophy. 3) The karts sometimes glitch out into nothingness or inexplicably flip over. This probably happened 15-20 times across 300+ races so it's not that frequent but it did happen. 4) Seriously Knuckles you waste of hedgehog space get your head out of your ass and DRIVE GODDAMI- Would I recommend Team Sonic Racing? Unless you enjoy racing games, no. It would probably frustrate a lot of novices. I personally really dug my time with the game. Other than the tedious Grand Prix, I felt like I flew past a lot of the game's challenges and think the game is very mechanically sound. Tie that in with a good amount of variety on the race tracks and some boppy music and you have a game that I am pleasantly surprised to say kept me happily preoccupied. But let's review the claims made in the opening paragraph. Who was more correct, the guide corrector or the lamenting commentators? My final time with the game came in at 28 hours. I think the 20-hour estimate on the trophy guide is absurd. It assumes you beat every event on Hard your first go, earn all the side medals and the key, and never lose an event. Trophy guides should ALWAYS slightly overestimate the time as nobody is ever going to get mad about finishing a game a little sooner than it suggests. People will get mad if they find themselves going 10+ hours over the suggested time. What about the difficulty? I think many commentators exaggerated the difficulty. This is definitely a 5/10 in my personal hierarchy, and while the guide creator should have also opted for something higher than 4/10, I can see where they're coming from given each side challenge has a formula that makes them all do-able with enough practice and beating Hard/Expert is pretty much a cakewalk if you follow the 5 tips I cited earlier. I ultimately earned the 3.67% rarity platinum in 4 days and 23 hours. Here are my final player stats in case you'd like to compare your own with mine. Now, do I take my foot off the gas and go back to some unique games or push the envelope for another UR? Hm. Panda Score: 7.5 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 5.0 / 10 Edited September 18, 2022 by realm722 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briste Posted September 21, 2022 Share Posted September 21, 2022 On 9/16/2022 at 10:04 AM, realm722 said: I don't think I've ever enjoyed sports coverage less than I do right now. I actually agree with you here and was just talking about this the other day with a friend of mine. I used to be huge into all fantasy sports, however every season but football is an absolute marathon and just ends up being a drag by the end and I stopped paying attention. Football is easy since you have to pay attention on Tuesday nights for waivers, and then just make sure your guys aren't hurt before games and then you can just enjoy. When DFS and sports betting came on the gambit, I also dabbled in that but I found it really sucked the joy out of watching sports for me. It became less about rooting for my team to win and more about covering the point spread or being pissed that my WR was injured and cost me a game. It was less about the competition and the athletes and more about the random numbers. I was frustrated if my team won, but not by enough...or I'd find myself hoping my team won but a guy on the team had a bad game so it wouldn't affect the outcome of my bet. I've also learned that whatever you think is going to happen, never happens and you just end up pissed off...I've decided to no longer bet on any game so that I can spend my time enjoying the contest instead of checking my phone for line updates and I don't care if my fantasy team has a rough week if my team wins. I've really enjoyed the first couple of weeks of the football season and I can't see me going back to betting at all. I don't watch sports as much as I used to since I'm the only one in my household that enjoys them. They bore my kids to tears and my wife couldn't care less lol I do get Sundays during the football season and generally can exile myself to the basement during the playoffs, but I haven't watched a full regular season baseball game in like six or seven years. It was tough for me at first since baseball was my first love and I used to watch 140+ games a year, but the game isn't the same anymore. I truly feel like an old man talking about 'back in my day' here...but I don't think anyone can look at baseball now and say it is the same game as 20 years ago. I used to love the drama of a game, but now I find it boring. It's the same formula...walk, k, walk, k, home run. I think it's moot what they're trying to do to 'fix' baseball by speeding up the game. I don't think it's the pace necessarily that turns people away, it's the product on the field. Everyone is an asset now and you've got to protect the asset. Complete games are a unicorn...players are actively encouraged not to run out ground balls so they don't pull muscles. What's wild is that players are more skilled now than ever in history, yet what they're being asked to do is just boring. I get that a good at bat can be a 9 pitch walk...but who wants to sit there for 5 minutes to see that? I feel like I'm getting a bit salty here, so I'll stop. It's a funny too because I've felt this existential crisis in sports/coverage seep a bit into my gaming habits. I had a system, that made me happy for many, many years and I've kind of lost sight of that a bit. I used to buy a game and play it to completion and then find a new game. Trophies made it fun and I still think it can be fun for me. The thing that has sapped my fun a bit lately is my Cal Ripken-like trophy streak. I've earned at least one trophy, every day, for 675 days. I've earned trophies on days I had major surgery, family vacations, late work days and most disappointingly...days I didn't really feel like playing. Trying to keep this streak alive has had me break a lot of the habits that I used to enjoy about gaming. I would start a new game before I was ready or wanted to, just so I could earn a trophy in it. I would stop playing a game I was enjoying in order to save the trophy that was about to pop for the next day. My gaming has become about the streak and not about the games and I've started to not have as much fun with it. I've decided that I want to try and keep my streak going until 11/15 when it will be exactly two years and then stop. I will then go back and finish all of these unfinished games on my list and I won't care if I don't get a trophy for weeks (looking at you SMB and Injustice)....but I want to get back to the things that made me happy gaming. I feel that relief watching sports and I want to get that back again with my gaming. Sorry for the hijack, but what you wrote about synced up quite a bit with some things I've been thinking about lately. Well done with Sonic! I totally agree with your assessment of it. I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would too! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted September 24, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 24, 2022 Game: Telling Lies Analysis: I bought the game for $5.99 in early September 2022 and it feels like everyone and their mother decided to as well based on the checklists around here! Why Telling Lies? While I am typically hesitant to dabble in games that are over 60% platinum rarity, I decided to finally jump at the opportunity to play this one given it is Sam Barlow's spiritual successor to "Her Story". Game Maker's Toolkit covered what made the game unique back in late 2015 and I was so fascinated by the game that I figured it'd be fun to go in completely blind to the creator's second endeavor on this unique interactive story formula. The idea of piecing together a story based on random sporadic words used in conversations and trying to think one step ahead of what the person on the other end of the video may have said so you can start connecting the pieces sounded like a good time. I'm fortunate enough to say that I managed to have ZERO plot details for me spoiled prior to playing. I'd like to offer that courtesy to those reading. So here's my SPOILER-FREE take on the game. If you like an experimental, novel, if ultimately not all-that-well-put-together idea, I think you could get something out of Telling Lies. Look at your game history and see if solely narrative-focused titles have managed to hold your attention. If they generally don't or you've never dabbled in these waters, I'd probably say skip on the game for now. There are a few reasons I feel that way but it's near impossible to discuss them without getting into the weeds, so here we go! (SPOILERS BELOW) What I Enjoyed About The Game - If you're anything like me, you'll be slightly spooked by the ambiance presented as Karen first boots up her computer. You're thrust right into the control of a Mac OS and begin dilly-dallying about with her computer before getting to the meat and potatoes of the retina software. You'll be able to make out a slight silhouette of her face while observing each video. After watching the shocking video of David's death where he suicide bombs the bridge, the screen for the first time ever faded out for a moment as I had crossed the 1 AM time threshold. I nearly crapped my pants. I thought that was scripted but it actually was just a magnificent, terrifying coincidence. These interruptions happen at the end of each hour in-game and I fully expected a jumpscare each time the clock inched closer... thankfully, Barlow never resorted to such cheap thrills. In terms of the actual video-watching process, I enjoyed it! At least for a good duration of my 1st playthrough. It's a blast once you realize that you can start observing a bunch of the environments to pick up on little clues that could be extremely clutch for uncovering videos that you haven't seen. The first "aha!" moment that happened for me was when David was out at the anonymous meeting and bumped into Ava. He never says her name, but due to the name tags, it served as a dead giveaway to help find more videos he sent to her. You can also find some crucial videos regarding the cam girl, Maxine Williams, by googling the tattoed "Max" on her left boob. Oddly enough, I think my three favorite videos are the following. 3) A bubbly Ava reads a book to Daniel and shows off her apartment. This was one of the first 2 or 3 videos I stumbled upon and I instantly gravitated to her character. 2) Emma talking to David and playing out the story in the dollhouse over him killing her abusive ex-boyfriend Paul. 1) Bizarrely enough, David's enthralling retelling of the old classic Rumpelstiltskin of weaving straw into gold to his daughter Alba. They were long, continuative anecdotes but I found my curiosity peaking the more I learned about each character. I also enjoyed randomly typing in words to see what popped up from "bro" to a few swears which I think the developers KNEW were going to be some people's inclination and placed a few curious videos for that very purpose. I will say I was very shocked to see no results displayed for "cheat/cheated" and "affair". Where it Falls Short - I may be a complete idiot, but unless I completely overlooked a crucial feature in the game, the "most efficient" way to play is unbelievably laborious. I'll explain. You will only be able to play videos from the start of a keyword. So let's say you choose a keyword such as "pipeline" and end up at minute 5:58 of a 7-minute video. You are incentivized to rewind to the start of the video which takes an agonizingly long amount of time. This sucks for two reasons. 1) It takes forever. 2) You're slightly spoiling the dialogue for yourself as you scrub back through the footage only to play it forward. If you choose to NOT play this way, you will miss huge key fragments of information that give context to many videos. Another downside is that you will inevitably start coming across the 5, 6, 8+ minute videos that if they aren't grabbing your attention can really suck to get through. I didn't enjoy the cam girl Maxine. Even if I knew there was key dialogue between her and David, far too often I skipped forward just to get the gist of the convo before moving on. This plagues a number of videos later on where you're seeing the "reply" or alternative angle to a talkative video and you're forced to suffer through the actors tryna make intriguing faces as the other person speaks, fast-forwarding through most of it, only offering minimal one or two-word replies. I thought in terms of the characters - 1) Ava, 2) David, 3) Alba (she's so adorable), 4) Emma, 5) Maxine, 6) other FBi agent?, 7) Drug dealer? would be my power rankings but it honestly takes a HARSH dip after spot #3. I also think the game suffers greatly from the fact it never actually challenges you to see if you're putting the pieces together. I understand how the free-flowing, "choose what you want to pick up" nature of the game could be appealing. But I would have loved to have been forced out a notepad to actually track the date/times, everyone's anecdotes, etc.. and so forth in order to actually explain what transpired. This is one of the biggest reasons I think the potential in this sort of game is very much still untapped. Imagine a sprawling mystery where you need to answer and input the information you've collected correctly in order to gain even more access to a larger archive of videos as the web and threads of the mystery twist and turn! I want to play THAT game! In the meantime, I'll respect what a small indie team like Barlow managed. Alexandra Shipp Appreciation Paragraph - I can forget everything this game talked about from the environmental terrorist group tryna shutdown a pipeline to poison a water supply or the fact David can't keep his pipe in his pants but the one thing I'm sure as hell not forgetting is Ava. Mhmmmmmmm. In the words of the immortal Mark Jackson, with all due respect, I'd hit it outta the park. Sing to me all day girl. Would I recommend Telling Lies? Probably not. I'm glad I've played it and I think a unique fraction of the gaming community could get something out of it but titles like this are always going to be remarkably niche unless they aim for the big-budget theatrics of Quantic Dream. I will say, the platinum was surprisingly more tricky than expected. I'll admit I'm an idiot who tried to get the "Missing King" for winning a game of Solitaire trophy without even actually knowing the rules for solitaire. I was so puzzled why my logic from The Solitaire Conspiracy wasn't transferring. I took a brief look at the vid from YouTube that explains the rules succinctly and managed to get it in 30 minutes after wasting an hour and a half prior to that for absolutely no reason. I also found the "Full Upload" trophy glitched on my initial save. I saw all 3 endings, went through all the words on the trophy guide twice, and nothing. I started a fresh save, went through every keyword while bookmarking every video, and made sure I had 169 (view the bookmarks tab) before watching the final ending and it finally popped. I earned the 68.08% rarity platinum in 2 days and 30 minutes. I'm now going to watch a bunch of videos on YouTube about the game and check out Barlow's 3rd main game, Immortality, to see if he's innovated more in the direction of my suggestions found earlier. Until then! Panda Score: 6.3 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.1 / 10 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted September 24, 2022 Share Posted September 24, 2022 51 minutes ago, realm722 said: Game: Telling Lies Ayyyy nice to see you weighing in on this one! I'm envious of your 1am moment man, I didn't get that til I was closer to finishing things up. That had me shook even without the interruption? I was meh on Maxine as well til the ending of her arc, I really enjoyed that... cuz I seriously disliked David. In that first video when he's talking about love into the camera I was just like "I'unno why but I already think you're full of shit." I don't think it bothered me as much as it did you, but it did get a touch tiresome after a while having to rewind videos back to the beginning. I feel the clips didn't need THAT level of specificity with the search results, but again, I was okay with it. 51 minutes ago, realm722 said: Alexandra Shipp Appreciation Paragraph - I can forget everything this game talked about from the environmental terrorist group tryna shutdown a pipeline to poison a water supply or the fact David can't keep his pipe in his pants but the one thing I'm sure as hell not forgetting is Ava. Mhmmmmmmm. In the words of the immortal Mark Jackson, with all due respect, I'd hit it outta the park. Sing to me all day girl. We are 100% on the same page here though, she bad. Just seemed like a cool, fun girl too. And that NSFW shit caught me off guard, ay que rica? I think I probably rank it in about the same territory as you. Cool game, it definitely impressed me, but yeah it ain't for everyone. Good read as always, mah dude! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted September 24, 2022 Share Posted September 24, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, realm722 said: Where it Falls Short - I may be a complete idiot, but unless I completely overlooked a crucial feature in the game, the "most efficient" way to play is unbelievably laborious. I'll explain. You will only be able to play videos from the start of a keyword. So let's say you choose a keyword such as "pipeline" and end up at minute 5:58 of a 7-minute video. You are incentivized to rewind to the start of the video which takes an agonizingly long amount of time. This sucks for two reasons. 1) It takes forever. 2) You're slightly spoiling the dialogue for yourself as you scrub back through the footage only to play it forward. If you choose to NOT play this way, you will miss huge key fragments of information that give context to many videos If you hold rewind as you click on a clip to watch it, (or immediately as it loads) it starts from the beginning, instead of at the keyword. Edited September 24, 2022 by DrBloodmoney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted September 24, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 24, 2022 On 9/20/2022 at 11:11 PM, Briste said: I haven't watched a full regular season baseball game in like six or seven years. It was tough for me at first since baseball was my first love and I used to watch 140+ games a year, but the game isn't the same anymore. I truly feel like an old man talking about 'back in my day' here...but I don't think anyone can look at baseball now and say it is the same game as 20 years ago. I used to love the drama of a game, but now I find it boring. It's the same formula...walk, k, walk, k, home run. I think it's moot what they're trying to do to 'fix' baseball by speeding up the game. I don't think it's the pace necessarily that turns people away, it's the product on the field. Everyone is an asset now and you've got to protect the asset. Complete games are a unicorn...players are actively encouraged not to run out ground balls so they don't pull muscles. What's wild is that players are more skilled now than ever in history, yet what they're being asked to do is just boring. I get that a good at bat can be a 9 pitch walk...but who wants to sit there for 5 minutes to see that? I feel like I'm getting a bit salty here, so I'll stop. I don't think you're alone in this sentiment. I almost always have baseball and the Marlins on in the background during evenings and only really intently watch if it's a start from Sandy (hopeful Cy Young winner this year). I think the rule changes they're going to make for next year are going to help the actual product. 1) Eliminating the shift will help get more balls in play and may slightly de-incentivize players from ONLY thinking about hitting it outta the park. 2) The pitch clock may take a month or so for players to adjust but it's been a huge success in the minors and if it can help shave 15-20 minutes of dead time during games, I think it'll be a huge success. I personally still LOVE playoff baseball and think the sport's slower pace works wonderfully when the next pitch or swing could shift an entire series. The Dodgers / Rays WS from 2020 still stands out in my mind with Arozareña coming home as one of my fave sports moments from one of my non-favorite teams. On 9/20/2022 at 11:11 PM, Briste said: It's a funny too because I've felt this existential crisis in sports/coverage seep a bit into my gaming habits. I had a system, that made me happy for many, many years and I've kind of lost sight of that a bit. I used to buy a game and play it to completion and then find a new game. Trophies made it fun and I still think it can be fun for me. The thing that has sapped my fun a bit lately is my Cal Ripken-like trophy streak. I've earned at least one trophy, every day, for 675 days. I've earned trophies on days I had major surgery, family vacations, late work days and most disappointingly...days I didn't really feel like playing. Trying to keep this streak alive has had me break a lot of the habits that I used to enjoy about gaming. I would start a new game before I was ready or wanted to, just so I could earn a trophy in it. I would stop playing a game I was enjoying in order to save the trophy that was about to pop for the next day. My gaming has become about the streak and not about the games and I've started to not have as much fun with it. I've decided that I want to try and keep my streak going until 11/15 when it will be exactly two years and then stop. I will then go back and finish all of these unfinished games on my list and I won't care if I don't get a trophy for weeks (looking at you SMB and Injustice)....but I want to get back to the things that made me happy gaming. I feel that relief watching sports and I want to get that back again with my gaming. Woof I feel for ya... it's one of the reasons I'm relieved to have never gotten one going for so long cuz I know my habits would make me want to keep my streak up ?. I sort of force myself into a similar issue of INSISTING on popping a platinum right at the "Level Up" mark every 10 levels just so all my recent Level History trophies are platinum. It's dumb. No one cares. Except me I guess lol. I think your idea of hitting an end date is perfect though. You had an incredible run, proved you could keep it up, and can get back to games that require a little bit more intensive earning which I think personally make for some of my favorite platinums. 12 hours ago, YaManSmevz said: I don't think it bothered me as much as it did you, but it did get a touch tiresome after a while having to rewind videos back to the beginning. I feel the clips didn't need THAT level of specificity with the search results, but again, I was okay with it. Yup! I'll also concede that I don't know of a great solution to the "issue". If you give every video the convenience of "just play from the beginning" it slightly deemphasizes the key loop of having to find key words to connect videos to one another. After listening to some critiques of the game, I liked one from Writing on Games that talked about how the process is supposed to be laborious and not fun or a breeze. A little bit highfalutin but I understood where he was coming from. 12 hours ago, YaManSmevz said: We are 100% on the same page here though, she bad. Just seemed like a cool, fun girl too. And that NSFW shit caught me off guard, ay que rica 12 hours ago, YaManSmevz said: I think I probably rank it in about the same territory as you. Cool game, it definitely impressed me, but yeah it ain't for everyone. Good read as always, mah dude! Thank you! I also figured I'd throw this out here and say that I did a little bit of YouTube digging on Barlow's 3rd game, Immortality, and good lord it looks BONKERS. I saw a bit of a glimpse from a YouTuber who published their stream but the concept was so intriguing I decided to hold off for now. It dropped less than a month ago (Aug 30 2022) and I'm hoping down the line it comes to PlayStation since I've never seen anything quite like it. 12 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: If you hold rewind as you click on a clip to watch it, (or immediately as it loads) it starts from the beginning, instead of at the keyword. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted September 24, 2022 Share Posted September 24, 2022 10 minutes ago, realm722 said: After listening to some critiques of the game, I liked one from Writing on Games that talked about how the process is supposed to be laborious and not fun or a breeze. A little bit highfalutin but I understood where he was coming from. Yoooo I loved that dude's Hitman videos, could've sworn I'd subscribed but apparently I did not. Corrected, though! And that vid is bookmarked, thanks homie? Yeah I can see that point too.. but I feel there's a point in a game where you're no longer being immersive and just creating busywork. Like in Detroit when you're playing as Kara and you gotta clean up the house, did we really need to get that in depth?? I know how cleaning a house works? 10 minutes ago, realm722 said: Thank you! I also figured I'd throw this out here and say that I did a little bit of YouTube digging on Barlow's 3rd game, Immortality, and good lord it looks BONKERS. I saw a bit of a glimpse from a YouTuber who published their stream but the concept was so intriguing I decided to hold off for now. It dropped less than a month ago (Aug 30 2022) and I'm hoping down the line it comes to PlayStation since I've never seen anything quite like it. Damn. Looks like that's another game on the watch list... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted October 1, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 1, 2022 Game: Wattam Analysis: I bought Wattam when it was on sale at the very end of May 2022 for $5.99. I had an absolutely marvelous time with it! (SPOILERS AFTER 1ST PARAGRAPH) Why Wattam? Wattam was a game I'd seen on sale for a number of years now. While the cartoonishly goofy characters caught my eye every now and then, I never felt compelled to check it out given the plethora of other options at my disposal. But that all changed after I played Katamari Damacy Reroll in April 2022. I think of the game even more fondly now than I do then, and it put its creative director Keita Takahashi on the map for me as someone who just thinks about games in a completely different fashion than most. When I went to his Wikipedia page and saw that Wattam was his latest creation, I immediately wishlisted it and snagged it a month later. But why did I wait until now to play it? I hadn't felt the urge to play anything "weirdo" until... Tim Rogers transcendental 6-hour review of the PS1 Classic, Boku No Natsuyasumi. I know what you're thinking. "Oh my god realm is going about this Tim guy again." I'm not sorry. I love this man about as much as any person can for someone they don't know. The entire video is magnificent, but if you're pressed for time, I URGE you to check out a portion near the end of the video where he considers why the PS1 & PS2 heyday was a glorious time for game likers. He mentions how Sony won due to the overwhelming volume of their library. Games like Doko Doko Issyo, LSD: Dream Emulator, Devil Dice, Incredible Crisis, Mizzurna Falls, Racing Lagoon, Legend of Legaia, & Raw Danger. I cannot express with enough ferocity how much Tim makes these games sound like the coolest games that have ever existed and I am profoundly envious that I've played none of them. The closest I'll ever get is getting to hear him wax poetic on his channel. But the next best thing after that is to continue pushing the envelope of unique, quirky games that are being created in the modern era. Hence, I dove headfirst into Wattam. A Game About Helping Others - If your interests and appreciation for quirkiness align with my own, Wattam will waste little to no time instantly capturing your attention. It's a game where you play as a green square ? known as the Mayor and bear the full responsibility of breathing life into a world lost in darkness. In most games, you can generally summarize them with some of the following characteristics: Shooting, platforming, crafting, & menu managing. In Wattam, the core game functions are EXPLODING, holding hands, eating, & pooping. I don't think I need to explain to you why that's awesome. The gameplay loop typically involves finding a crying friend in need of assistance and perceiving through the text bubbles what is required in order to find the solution. Someone misses an old friend and needs them to be found? Go get that friend! A father has lost his children across the various biomes? Time to round them up like a cowboy and bring 'em home. I had a joyous time with it and the game is very good about making these quests as streamlined yet variable so one feature never gets too old. I love the entire general concept and design of the game. The way the characters will giggle like crazy when you KABOOM. How you can gather a huge amount holding hands and send them blasting off halfway across the island. The music is immaculate and A Long Time: Six Years has permanently placed itself on my Video Game Music Playlist. I adore the over-the-top bombastic text that smothers your entire screen whenever an old inanimate object returns from the abyss. "WELCOME BACK TOILET". You can tell how much the developers poured their love into the game given how much soul it has and it's such an ambitious project given every character in the game is moving in real-time no matter what island you're on. Watch Dogs Legion bragged about how "EVERY NPC IS PLAYABLE". Wattam was even more ambitious. You can't play as a train in front of Big Ben in WDL. Yet you can play as the SUN AND EARTH ITSELF IN WATTAM. Hold the L, Ubisoft. My Favorite Gaming Decision Ever - (SPOILERS) I add the spoiler tag yet again here since this is quite possibly one of my favorite gaming moments in recent memory and I'd hate to reveal it to someone who wants to play the game as it caught me completely off guard. Essentially, the reason why the Mayor needed to even bother recollecting all of his friends and breathing life back into Earth is because the Moon was wildly jealous and sabotaged everything leading the universe to fall into despair over its envy. At the very end of the game, right when you're about to make a circle to try and breathe life back into Earth by holding hands, you'll notice you're lacking a final link in order to commence the process. The screen darkens and ominous music plays... it's the MOON! He's returned! With evil laughing. As the camera zooms in on him... it bursts into tears. It explains why it did what it did and how it was driven by envy and prejudice. While still inconsolable, all they say is that they're sorry. You're then given a choice of 4 dialogue options to say to it. For those who'll never play the game, here they are. I can't convey how much this choice of all choices in games... impacted me. I read through each possible reply several times. I thought the "it's okay" was far too flippant given the circumstances, but then I read the others. Triangle is alright all the way up until - "We forgive you.... just this once." I dislike the notion of having a hard limit on forgiveness. We will invariably mess up again in the future due to our imperfections. Would you want that sort of cold, line in the sand forgiveness where if you ever slip up again it'll spell the end for you? I disliked X since it's so unnecessarily hostile for someone in tears. They know what they did was wrong. Why do you have to run the score up? I also oppose the final line "What you've done is unforgivable". Because of this, I ultimately selected square since I felt it had the most positive connotation even if the introduction is a bit condescending. The ultimate finality is that key connection of moving forward together. I probably took about 10 full minutes deciding and meditating in my head on what I would do in this spot. Both as the Mayor (offering forgiveness) and as the Moon (seeking forgiveness). The choice made me think harder than any I've encountered in David Cage's games. It wasn't a frivolous, "kill or save X character" at the end of so many games where the choice is obvious but if you wanna be a jerk you can choose the other option. It felt so important (even if ultimately isn't) and the game made me feel the gravity of the situation given the tone throughout my entire runtime with it. I love this moment and I don't think I'll forget it any time soon. A Trophy Hunter's Worst Nightmare - I've spoken glowingly about the entire game up until this point. But now it's time to talk about the elephant in the room that has made so many people in YouTube comments and PSNProfiles threads comment their loathing for this game. Due to the inherent nature of a game with 100+ characters moving at all times and the trophies that ask for you to KABOOM 100 times, find all characters, turn all characters into gold, etc... there is some trophy instability and glitchiness that can occur with such a unique title. I've seen fears that if you don't turn the Snowman on Summer Island into a fruit, he can glitch out, vanish, and you're forced to play the entire game again. I personally encountered an issue where the bowling pins side quest (random gold pin on each island) did NOT appear for me in the post-game after finishing it. Thank goodness I got to reload to save just before finishing the final House quest and was able to lose less than 20 minutes of play-time. If I hadn't, I would have been thoroughly screwed. These issues have been so prevalent I've seen numerous comments ripping the game and calling it a POS beneath many videos/comment threads. It... saddens me. It almost kinda makes me dislike trophy hunting. I love trophies. But I love games even more. I couldn't imagine hating this game due to an asinine "turn all the characters into gold by flushing them down a toilet" trophy not properly popping. But that's the mentality players fixated on trophies and accomplishments have. Hell, I may be speaking from survivorship bias and say all this just because it didn't happen to me. I probably wouldn't have loved having to play the game again even though I thoroughly enjoyed it just because of 1-2 dumb trophies. It's something I'm going to be wary of going forward. "I appreciate the trophies, but not at the expense of playing bizarre fun games and turning my appreciation for them into hatred." I earned the 19.20% rarity platinum in 3 days and 4 hours. Would I recommend Wattam? Absolutely! I think the game is a joyous experience and I managed to earn the platinum in just 6 hours of play-time. I think the game is worth getting around some of the unusual controls (turning the camera with R2 instead of the right analog stick). I think it's worth the potential glitchiness (they really should have put a "reset character" option in the character selection screen but hey). I DO recommend that you make a save at the start of each new island and back it up to the Cloud right before the finale. Wattam captures everything Tim Rogers discusses in Chapter 4 of his 6-hour review of Boku No Natsuyasumi when he considers "we need more games like this." Wattam is the definition of one of those games that we need more of. I think my fondness for it is only going to grow once I look back on it a few months from now and I hope a lengthy review like this encourages a person or two to broaden their horizons and check it out. WOW! Can you believe that? I managed to get through this entire review without mentioning something like: "look at those wacky Japanese and their crazy games". Panda Score: 7.6 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.6 / 10 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted October 4, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 4, 2022 Game: Firewatch Analysis: I bought Firewatch for $7.99 in early September 2022 and it's about damn time considering the game hasn't been on sale in over 4 years! Why Firewatch? As stated above, I jumped at the opportunity to buy the game as the last time it was discounted from its full price of $20 was all the way back in mid-April 2018, well before I started properly variety gaming. Having been released in 2016, Firewatch is the definition of a game that I heard received rare reviews for being a "compelling walking simulator" with a story that justified its limited gameplay mechanics and did not wear out its welcome. I also vaguely remember Rob from Playstation Access mentioning it in one of his immaculate Friday Features about being one of the rare view games he managed to achieve 100% completion. Its been several years but it was finally my turn to play and determine whether or not the game was worthy of all the praise it had once received. (SPOILERS BELOW, this is a narrative-heavy game and I'll be talking about it) An Undeniably Excellent Introduction - I love choose-your-own-adventure books. It's no surprise then, that I naturally have found myself to choose-your-own-adventure games where you can alter the story in subtle (and sometimes significant) ways that allow the player to feel like their decisions actually hold some weight to them. You can only imagine with this history how much I loved the way the developers over at Campo Santo decided to introduce us to our protagonist's Henry story. Rather than make him a blank slate, there's a brief series of decisions you'll be allowed to make to determine how Henry's life was formed prior to you taking full control of him. You'll be able to decide between a beagle or a German Shepherd, and determine what you do with your wife, who regretfully suffers from early on-set dementia for someone in the early 40s. The game pulls no punches and allows the player to feel the heaviness of Henry's unfortunate past before letting you bask in the serene nature settings you'll be engaging with throughout the remainder of your playthrough. I really appreciated it and imagine it helped many players to get instantly invested in Henry and how his story would play out. How It Holds Your Attention - While a solid introduction is great, how was the game actually going to hold your attention for what many would consider to be a very boring job? (Seriously, this game takes place in 1989 Wyoming). Sitting around waiting for a fire to start just to call it into the necessary emergency departments seems unfathomably boring. Thankfully, Firewatch has two tricks up its sleeve. 1) Conversations w/ Delilah and 2) Small intriguing mysteries that stay within the realm of possibility. I'll start by praising the former. Cissy Jones (Delilah's voice actor) absolutely obliterates this role. I could listen to her talk all week. I'd be scrounging for an interactable item in the environment just so Henry would have something to report to her just to hear her voice. I think the game would be an unceasing slog if it wasn't for how marvelously she banters with Henry and you're able to see their relationship blossom over their numerous conversations. As for the latter reasons, I just appreciate how the game knows what it is. You'll be investigating odd smoke starting in the distance and discover its a few rowdy teenagers who are out of line. You can get asked to scoop up some supplies or investigate suspicious happenings when you hear an odd noise or two. The big mystery of the game is figuring out who on earth is listening in on your conversations with Delilah to the extremest obsession. Transcribing full dialogues. Recording it to various cassettes. The horror and fear of a jump scare I felt at the campsite where you discover the tracking device was VERY real. After being knocked out early via a sucker punch I fully expected the game to pull a full jerk move but thankfully they didn't. The mystery is actually resolved and explained (take notes Inside and not left super vague inviting a bunch of nonsensical theories) While the game's ending for me was at least quite melancholy (going to visit Julia in Australia, asking Delilah to come down to Boulder Colorado), I appreciate how it didn't think it needed: "there are aliens or some world-altering event" twist at the end to "increase" the stakes. Would I recommend Firewatch? Sure! It's one of the better 100%'s I've played in recent memory and the game is a breeze to play through. As long as you keep your eye out for the 5 DLC trophies you can earn on two specific days, you can spend the rest of the game carefree just enjoying the narrative. One of the criticisms I will offer is the odd... out-of-body moments that happened a handful of times throughout the game? They are never alluded to the player in any way, yet you'll randomly find Henry in front of a river, viewing himself through a TV, or bizarrely t-posing along with a bunch of other mannequins outside of Cottonwood Creek. I was quietly waiting for it to become relevant to the plot and it just... never did? It feels like something hamfistedly included in order to make the game secretly "more deep" or bait "Game Analysis" YouTubers into concocting various theories. A positive I will give to the game to balance out the criticism is I really dig how they use the map in this game. It's laborious, cumbersome, and precisely the sort of mechanic that makes the game slightly more lively than if they had made a simple mini-map and "go here from here" pathway finder. In a larger open world cup it'd be obnoxious as hell but for a game as small in scope and all about nature as this one, it works wonderfully. I earned the 12.47% rarity 100% completion in 2 days and 23 minutes. Back to platinums! Panda Score: 7.2 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 1.4 / 10 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted October 7, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 7, 2022 Game: GoNNER Analysis: I bought GoNNER for $1.99 all the way back in mid-January 2021. It has sat in my backlog for far too long and it was time I finally faced the music. Why GoNNER? - Honestly, its been so long since I bought the game that I couldn't even tell you what my thought process was. I bought Snake Pass, Beyond Eyes, & Manuel Samuel along with it. If I had to venture a guess, I imagine the cheap price tag and somewhat intriguing thought of achieving an ultra-rare were enough to entice me back then. So then why did the game sit on the pine for nearly a year and a half? I think it was an odd mixture of a few factors. 1) The game is incredibly niche. I'm just the 78th platinum achiever on PSNProfiles. That's the 3rd fewest of my 195 platinums to date. 2) The game does not save your progress when you close the application. More on that later. 3) I thought information on the game was remarkably scarce. It turns out I vastly overthought how complex the game actually was. There's a wonderfully detailed TrueAchievements Guide that should serve you very well to get started. If you want something a little more heavy on information regarding the various weapons, heads, & equipables, you can take a look at the Ultimate Steam Guide on the game. Still... I was hesitant. So I reached out to someone who posted on r/Trophies and had achieved the game a little less than a month ago to see if they had any recommendations. @coldhardcrash_. I salute you, my friend. Thank you for giving me the extra confidence boost I needed to finally give the game a try along with the necessary loadout guidance in order to kick its ass. You did not have to reply to a comment from a month-old thread you created yet you did anyway. o7 What You Need To Know - As GoNNER is still relatively under-covered from a player's platinuming experience, I feel compelled to document what I think is the best way to most efficiently gear yourself up for the platinum. 1) Check into the daily challenges. Why? I popped "Undead" & "Hahaha" without lifting a finger as the required items formed part of the gear set-up challenge for the day. You could fall backwards into this and save yourself some hassle as I did. 2) Use the brick head. Use the scythe. Use the shark fin. WHY? This is the most game-breaking loadout. The brick head can be earned INSANELY early on (not even 1 minute in) and despite having fewer hearts, your guy does not shatter up after sustaining a hit forcing him to go recollect all his gear which is the case with other heads. The scythe is the only melee weapon in the game but it is SPECTACULAR. An annoying thing about aiming with guns in GoNNER is you cannot aim up or down. You can only shoot left to right. This makes it annoying to shoot enemies climbing up walls or that are buzzing above you. The scythe eliminates all those woes and by frequently spamming it while running, you'll be able to avoid damage the vast majority of the time. 3) Make sure you get that extra heart each time you meet Sally. See this video. You can earn an extra heart each time even if you don't complete the previous level without taking damage. It's a lifesaver for the final boss fight as having 5 hits vs. 3 hits can be the difference between winning and losing. Just remember to throw away your equipment (as demonstrated) and talk to Sally 3 times in order to attain it. Finally, 4) Switch to a gun, preferably the shotgun, before the final fight. Why? Here was my attempt fighting Death with the scythe. It was my first time fighting him. I could not close the distance. It's not a fun time. My 1st Session - My first time playing the game, I went in with absolutely zero familiarity with any of the tops above. It was not ideal. I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter. I found I was running out of bullets far too frequently. If you don't have the backpack equipable for a reload, the only way you refresh your bullets is by killing an enemy and hoping they drop a pack. I was frustrated by the inability to aim downward or upwards. I kept dying over and over again on the final boss in Cave World (3 red skulls that move fast and lunge at you). I managed to beat it once, only to be wholly perplexed by the jump in the difficulty of Robot world. Good lord. Jumping across disappearing platforms if you touch them? I had managed to earn 5 trophies on my first day of playing and kinda dug the idea of collecting glyphs (kill 5 enemies in quick succession, this currency can be used at stores or for a revival if you have enough), and loved the splooshy atmosphere (bubbles, appearance of the level disappearing or materializing the closer you get to it) but I thought the game was going to give me a headache with earning the platinum if I was struggling this much early on. My 2nd Session - Now informed with the proper loadout and a new gameplan, I entered the game with a fresh save (remember, all gathered items wipes each time you close the application), I focused on gathering the scythe. It's insanely easy. Make it to the shop right before the final boss of the 1st world. Use all your glyps rerolling. It'll appear. Smash 5 mushrooms from the ceilings in a row for a glyph and buy it. The scythe with the shark fin is INSANELY overpowered. It allowed me to decimate the 1st world boss. The robot world is a breeze to fly through as, and I can't believe I haven't said this 'til now, YOU DON'T NEED TO FIGHT ANY ENEMIES. JUST MAKE IT TO THE END OF THE LEVEL. You should probably fight a few packs of easy ones every now and then just to earn a solid amount of glyphs but when your mentality of the game shifts from fighting to finding the exit as soon as possible, the challenge of the game drops tremendously. Before seriously going for a winning run, I aimed for a few side trophies. I earned the 100x combo in Cave World just playing very erratically and aggressively always moving forward. I then aimed to start making real forward progress and was shocked by how short the game was. The Shooty world (white background) is super easy and the final boss is a simple escape from a big enemy. Death world gave me a few issues since I kept playing too face and stupidly would kill myself on a number of gravestones, but even botching up this late in the game before the final boss isn't that bad. It only takes 10-12 minutes to get back here and by playing more methodically, I was finally able to take on the final boss with a shotgun. I took 5 hits, was on my last heart of health, and somehow, someway, fired off one last blast that defeated him. Not a single death on the whole run. I had earned the 4.93% rarity platinum in just 1 day and 4 hours. Would I recommend GoNNER? Maybe? It's a weird game. I managed to earn the platinum in less than 6 hours of total actual play-time. It's not a laborious experience. Given the fact you can choose what gear you want for each run, I wouldn't exactly call it a roguelike either. While the enemies are slightly randomized each run, there are absolutely familiar templates that I saw time and time again in such a relatively small window. I enjoyed the aesthetic. The game is especially fun with the scythe, yet not as much with the guns. I thought the store mechanics were solid. The bosses were fine, the Robot world heap of trash is hilariously non-competitive. I wonder how much differently I would have viewed the game if you were forced to defeat all the enemies in each level as opposed to being able to blast through each one as quickly as possible. I think the game will most serve as a testament to how much I can build up a game's difficulty in my own head and put it off for so long when in all reality... it wasn't that big of a deal in the first place. Thanks GoNNER! Panda Score: 6.88 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.7 / 10 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coldhardcrash_ Posted October 8, 2022 Share Posted October 8, 2022 9 hours ago, realm722 said: Game: GoNNER Analysis: I bought GoNNER for $1.99 all the way back in mid-January 2021. It has sat in my backlog for far too long and it was time I finally faced the music. Why GoNNER? - Honestly, its been so long since I bought the game that I couldn't even tell you what my thought process was. I bought Snake Pass, Beyond Eyes, & Manuel Samuel along with it. If I had to venture a guess, I imagine the cheap price tag and somewhat intriguing thought of achieving an ultra-rare were enough to entice me back then. So then why did the game sit on the pine for nearly a year and a half? I think it was an odd mixture of a few factors. 1) The game is incredibly niche. I'm just the 78th platinum achiever on PSNProfiles. That's the 3rd fewest of my 195 platinums to date. 2) The game does not save your progress when you close the application. More on that later. 3) I thought information on the game was remarkably scarce. It turns out I vastly overthought how complex the game actually was. There's a wonderfully detailed TrueAchievements Guide that should serve you very well to get started. If you want something a little more heavy on information regarding the various weapons, heads, & equipables, you can take a look at the Ultimate Steam Guide on the game. Still... I was hesitant. So I reached out to someone who posted on r/Trophies and had achieved the game a little less than a month ago to see if they had any recommendations. @coldhardcrash_. I salute you, my friend. Thank you for giving me the extra confidence boost I needed to finally give the game a try along with the necessary loadout guidance in order to kick its ass. You did not have to reply to a comment from a month-old thread you created yet you did anyway. o7 What You Need To Know - As GoNNER is still relatively under-covered from a player's platinuming experience, I feel compelled to document what I think is the best way to most efficiently gear yourself up for the platinum. 1) Check into the daily challenges. Why? I popped "Undead" & "Hahaha" without lifting a finger as the required items formed part of the gear set-up challenge for the day. You could fall backwards into this and save yourself some hassle as I did. 2) Use the brick head. Use the scythe. Use the shark fin. WHY? This is the most game-breaking loadout. The brick head can be earned INSANELY early on (not even 1 minute in) and despite having fewer hearts, your guy does not shatter up after sustaining a hit forcing him to go recollect all his gear which is the case with other heads. The scythe is the only melee weapon in the game but it is SPECTACULAR. An annoying thing about aiming with guns in GoNNER is you cannot aim up or down. You can only shoot left to right. This makes it annoying to shoot enemies climbing up walls or that are buzzing above you. The scythe eliminates all those woes and by frequently spamming it while running, you'll be able to avoid damage the vast majority of the time. 3) Make sure you get that extra heart each time you meet Sally. See this video. You can earn an extra heart each time even if you don't complete the previous level without taking damage. It's a lifesaver for the final boss fight as having 5 hits vs. 3 hits can be the difference between winning and losing. Just remember to throw away your equipment (as demonstrated) and talk to Sally 3 times in order to attain it. Finally, 4) Switch to a gun, preferably the shotgun, before the final fight. Why? Here was my attempt fighting Death with the scythe. It was my first time fighting him. I could not close the distance. It's not a fun time. My 1st Session - My first time playing the game, I went in with absolutely zero familiarity with any of the tops above. It was not ideal. I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter. I found I was running out of bullets far too frequently. If you don't have the backpack equipable for a reload, the only way you refresh your bullets is by killing an enemy and hoping they drop a pack. I was frustrated by the inability to aim downward or upwards. I kept dying over and over again on the final boss in Cave World (3 red skulls that move fast and lunge at you). I managed to beat it once, only to be wholly perplexed by the jump in the difficulty of Robot world. Good lord. Jumping across disappearing platforms if you touch them? I had managed to earn 5 trophies on my first day of playing and kinda dug the idea of collecting glyphs (kill 5 enemies in quick succession, this currency can be used at stores or for a revival if you have enough), and loved the splooshy atmosphere (bubbles, appearance of the level disappearing or materializing the closer you get to it) but I thought the game was going to give me a headache with earning the platinum if I was struggling this much early on. My 2nd Session - Now informed with the proper loadout and a new gameplan, I entered the game with a fresh save (remember, all gathered items wipes each time you close the application), I focused on gathering the scythe. It's insanely easy. Make it to the shop right before the final boss of the 1st world. Use all your glyps rerolling. It'll appear. Smash 5 mushrooms from the ceilings in a row for a glyph and buy it. The scythe with the shark fin is INSANELY overpowered. It allowed me to decimate the 1st world boss. The robot world is a breeze to fly through as, and I can't believe I haven't said this 'til now, YOU DON'T NEED TO FIGHT ANY ENEMIES. JUST MAKE IT TO THE END OF THE LEVEL. You should probably fight a few packs of easy ones every now and then just to earn a solid amount of glyphs but when your mentality of the game shifts from fighting to finding the exit as soon as possible, the challenge of the game drops tremendously. Before seriously going for a winning run, I aimed for a few side trophies. I earned the 100x combo in Cave World just playing very erratically and aggressively always moving forward. I then aimed to start making real forward progress and was shocked by how short the game was. The Shooty world (white background) is super easy and the final boss is a simple escape from a big enemy. Death world gave me a few issues since I kept playing too face and stupidly would kill myself on a number of gravestones, but even botching up this late in the game before the final boss isn't that bad. It only takes 10-12 minutes to get back here and by playing more methodically, I was finally able to take on the final boss with a shotgun. I took 5 hits, was on my last heart of health, and somehow, someway, fired off one last blast that defeated him. Not a single death on the whole run. I had earned the 4.93% rarity platinum in just 1 day and 4 hours. Would I recommend GoNNER? Maybe? It's a weird game. I managed to earn the platinum in less than 6 hours of total actual play-time. It's not a laborious experience. Given the fact you can choose what gear you want for each run, I wouldn't exactly call it a roguelike either. While the enemies are slightly randomized each run, there are absolutely familiar templates that I saw time and time again in such a relatively small window. I enjoyed the aesthetic. The game is especially fun with the scythe, yet not as much with the guns. I thought the store mechanics were solid. The bosses were fine, the Robot world heap of trash is hilariously non-competitive. I wonder how much differently I would have viewed the game if you were forced to defeat all the enemies in each level as opposed to being able to blast through each one as quickly as possible. I think the game will most serve as a testament to how much I can build up a game's difficulty in my own head and put it off for so long when in all reality... it wasn't that big of a deal in the first place. Thanks GoNNER! Panda Score: 6.88 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.7 / 10 Great job man! So glad to hear my bit of advice helped out 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted October 11, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 11, 2022 Game: Party Golf Analysis: I bought Party Golf for $0.74 back in mid-June 2022 and for under $1, the customization is absolutely mind-boggling! Why Party Golf? There's no need to get bogged down in the weeds on this one. Unless a game has unobtainable trophies or is an unfathomable grind, I'll almost always pick up a game that's on sale for sub-$1. Party Golf fit that description. I expected very little in terms of actual quality but the potential shot at an ultra-rare in around 10 hours according to the Trophy Guide appealed to me. There's always a chance you'll find an odd gem or two. I think it's crazy I got Flatland Vol. 1 for 75¢ when it's a fundamentally sound platformer or No Thing for half a dollar which while a little broken and rough around the edges, is a game I somehow reflect fondly upon nearly a full year later. The Intention Behind Party Golf - Let's not beat around the bush. Party Golf is meant to be a fun, goofy couchplay game with friends and family. The game is intended for a fun 1-2 hour play session every now and then where you compete in increasingly wacky circumstances and enjoy the absurdity of wall-hacking through the level to achieve 1st place or by sabotaging your friends in a last-ditch effort after you've been eliminated. It's not meant to be taken seriously. It's supposed to be Mario Kart-esque in the sense the most skilled player isn't always meant to win and the fun is found in the fact your mom or dad could scoop up the controller and steal a round or two. That's all lovely and good. I think, having fiddled with the game for several hours, the game achieves all these goals to perfection. I have no doubt that groups of people would love some of the ridiculous settings you can turn on in the game to absolutely break it and make it a riot with buddies and friends alike. The customization in the game is mental. I really did not expect it out of a sub-$1 purchase. The game even warns you when you open up the "Custom Game" setting for the first time that it's intended for advanced players. I ignored those instructions based on my trophy goblin mindset and quickly found myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choices given to the player. Being able to alter terrain, match objectives, size, power of shots, powerups, round length, etc... doesn't cover half of it. That "etc..." is doing some serious heavy lifting. In terms of actual content, I don't think I've played a game with more in it than Party Golf given its price tag. This is not a cheap, haphazardly thrown-together project someone threw together in Unity and decided to list on the PlayStation Store. I want to make it VERY clear this is a solid product and the developers over at Giant Margarita deserve a ton of credit for letting players curate their own preferable experience. As A Trophy List Tho... - Unsurprisingly, as a trophy hunter, Party Golf was a very unusual experience that the developers likely hadn't planned for. There's a bunch of wacky ass objectives and achievements to earn that would only come about if you intentionally aimed for them. So I did. It was... fine. It's honestly a bit cathartic and mesmerizing slowly going down a checklist and seeing one trophy pop after another. A lot of the time spent with the game will be creating a custom game, activating the necessary parameters to make a trophy far more feasible, and finally executing on that vision while playing. None of it is difficult. You will inevitably have the hilarious conundrum of having 4 active controllers in your vicinity for certain trophies. I had 2 PS5 and 2 PS4 controllers. These are the sorts of secret, dark, hidden underbelly aspects of trophy hunting that no one wants to talk about. Imagine someone walking in on you while you're quickly aiming and firing with all 4 controllers at once juggling them between your two hands like some sort of recluse desperately trying to recreate what this game could feel like if you had any sort of human companion. Make sure you rub the soap in extra deep next time you shower to get the stink off. NONETHELESS, I enjoyed my time completing the various objectives since you really do achieve them at a brisk pace. "Underdog" and "Denied" posed me some trouble but really all you have to do is take turns with the other 3 controllers winning before coming back at the end with your main player. it could take a handful of tries but you'll get it. I will say that the game did crash on me 10+ times. Almost EVERY time I went into settings and while meaning to activate 8-player mode accidentally changed the language from English to French. Oups, c'était mon erreur. The "win 100 matches" & "play 1000 rounds" trophies were a slight grind at the end but just holding X as you win over and over again with no AI-enabled doesn't take that long compared to other more labor-intensive grinds. It took me around 10 hours of play-time, but I ultimately earned the 3.68% rarity platinum in 3 days and 1 hour. It's my 10th ultra-rare platinum of the year! Would I recommend Party Golf? Probably not? Let me phrase that better. As a trophy-hunting experience, it's not awful, but I don't think most people would get much meaningful enjoyment out of it. This is the classic game that could send a trophy hunter on the fence into an existential crisis of "why am I trophy hunting and wasting my gaming time". Thankfully, I'm not one of those people. As a casual experience with friends/family? I think Party Golf is a delightful game and EASILY worth its asking price if you can get it on sale. Hell, at that price, if you only play it for one evening with friends over and have a few morsels of a good time, I still think it's a great value. Panda Score: 6.4 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.2 / 10 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted October 12, 2022 Share Posted October 12, 2022 22 hours ago, realm722 said: Game: Party Golf Hey, a game I actually played before! Looking back I should go cleanup some trophies in that game as they do not look that difficult, maybe just a little annoying. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted October 13, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 13, 2022 A World Map of Every Country I've Played A Game From Based on Developer EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a catalog of 239 games I have 100% completed or platinumed accurate as of October 13th, 2022. Video games are a gigantic industry. Their popularity has boomed in the last decade in both the casual and hardcore demographics. This has led to their globalization to the point that even a small handful of dudes or dudettes in any country around the world can create a game fueled entirely by passion and self-determination. Money helps too, I've heard. I love keeping track of weird quirky stats from my gaming catalog and figured this one would be a fun avenue to explore. Just how diverse are my gaming preferences from the standpoint of developer teams? The Big 4 - The USA, Canada, Japan & UK are the titans of the gaming industry. At least for console/PC (in this thread we don't acknowledge mobile gaming I don't care HOW big it is buddy). This is made hamfistedly clear by the raw numbers. While I am mildly impressed by the fact that just a hash over 30% of the games I've played are from the United States, the reality is 4 countries control 69% of my gaming interests. The U.S. is king due to raw numbers and the existence of so many indie studios. Canada is somewhat surprisingly second, but the moment you realize that the city of Montreal ALONE made a purposeful effort to attract small game studios I was quickly impressed by the number from my indie catalog that are originated and based there. Japan are the champions of the Eastern hemisphere to nobody's surprise. Square Enix, Japan Studio (RIP), & Namco have been a staple of my library and I honestly could see them taking over 2nd and holding for the foreseeable future given the number of games I have in my backlog from the land of the rising sun. Finally, the UK rounds out the heavy hitters and uhh... that average score is kind of concerning. It's reasonable that all of them wouldn't rank as the highest single country based on average score due to their sheer volume. You'll play great games (US - Hades, Canada - Spiritfarer, Japan - FF7 Remake) and bad ones (US - Chasm, Canada - Child of Light, Japan - Dragon Quest Heroes) with enough time. But the UK? Down at a mid-6? I decided to look into it. The Batman: Arkham franchise is doing some heavy lifting along with a few neat other indie titles like Paradise Killer and Snake Pass but the majority are low 6/10 titles which leads to their score taking a beating. The Healthy Middle Class - I am blown away that after the Big 4, SWEDEN of all countries makes the Top 5. They're also not here on sheer luck. They have some ridiculously impressive indie studios. Coldwood Interactive are the folks behind my beloved Unravel. Simogo caught lightning in a bottle with Sayonara Wild Hearts. Hell, if you removed Zoink Games from list their numbers would be even higher! France is unsurprisingly 6th given their size as a nation but the shocking fact isn't the fact I've played 11 games from the French, but the fact not a single of them have been an Ubisoft title! Actually, wait, that's a lie. I do have 250+ hours invested in Scrabble but that doesn't count since nobody thinks of Scrabble when they think Ubisoft. Shoutout to the folks over at The Game Bakers for Furi & Haven. Germany finds itself in 7th and while their score may be underwhelming at the moment, the folks over at Mimimi Games (creators of Shadow Tactics) have a chance to hit it outta the park when I play Desperados 3 next month. In 8th, we have the country I would deem as best having created an eclectic library with a large enough sample size to credit them without being hasty... the Australians! Damn man! Those guys make some damn great indie games! The Forgotten City, Hollow Knight, & Unpacking? Give me more of what they're having over there. Russia finds itself in 9th thanks to the Beholder series and the wonderfully weird Ash of Gods. The Netherlands are here thanks to Guerrilla Games & the Horizon franchise. Denmark has A Hat in Time & Forgotton Anne. Honestly, quite happy with the variety here and I'm happy to see all of them rate so well! Nations With 2 or 1 Games Played - In an effort to not drag this list out, I'll be calling out some of the highlights. An important factor here to remember is given the stupidly small sample size, average rating should not count as an indictment against that nation for their creative game-making ability. Seriously. The one Indian guy who made Dark Mystery which I didn't enjoy shouldn't condemn a nation of 1.38 billion people. In the same vein, for as much as I love Tropico 5, I'm going to need to see a little bit more out of Bulgaria and Haemimont Games before I crown them the victors of gaming for All-Time. Poland is highly rated due to SUPERHOT. Norway has Owlboy. China stands out distinctly in my mind since both My Time at Portia & Neon Abyss managed to get me to write 3k+ words about them a piece. I have so much to say about their games. They do some things unbelievably well but... I think they lack a little bit of the soul factor that endears me to other indies. No, I will not play Genshin Impact. Keep that narcotic away from me. Italy has been given a bad name due to the folks over at Milestone. They make crappy racing games. Make your own version of Cooking Papa dammit. I was quite chuffed to say Venezuela & Brazil up here to represent some South American countries. I talked a little bit about the uniqueness of a game out of Venezuela on VA11-HA11A's review. I'm fascinated to keep experimenting and would love to see if from a year or two from now one of these nations can emerge like a Sweden or Australia and consistently have me say: "damn, those folks sure know how to make some fun games!" Countries to Target For the Future - For as much as the map displayed has sizable portions in green, the amount in red is still overwhelming. How do I rectify that? By making a purposeful effort to try out games from countries I haven't yet sampled from. Where can I begin? As a Spanish speaker, I'm compelled to stick by countries where the US ran CIA operations. There's a studio in Chihuahua, Mexico named Lienzo that's made a few indie titles. The Chileans have ACE Team which is a sizable studio with a number of games available on the PS4. I'm VERY intrigued by the fellas over at Dream Uncorporated in Colombia who made Cris Tales. It's a shame that the biggest studio in Argentina (Nimble Giant Entertainment) makes multiplayer games or else I'd definitely check them out. Moving on over to Africa, I'd absolutely love to play some games from over there but the reality is just about every google search I manage focus entirely on various mobile gaming developers over there. It's understandable given the inherent limitation of consoles in the region but I would love to at least play one game from the continent in the next year. In Europe, I'd love to sample titles from Ireland, Portugal, & Switzerland. Hell, I think of all the continents I'm most likely to "complete" it's most definitely Europe given the possibility of some small indie teams in the nations that formerly comprised Yugoslavia. Finally, in Asia and Oceania, how is it even possible I've avoided a game from South Korea up until this point? I need to rectify that. Please feel free to give me some suggestions. New Zealand may also have some untapped potential. That was a fun ride! I hope this post may have irked the curiosity of some of y'all to review your own gaming catalogs and see what the #'s would say. Until next time! 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted October 14, 2022 Share Posted October 14, 2022 16 hours ago, realm722 said: Finally, in Asia and Oceania, how is it even possible I've avoided a game from South Korea up until this point? I need to rectify that. Please feel free to give me some suggestions. New Zealand may also have some untapped potential. South Korea is going to be harder to do than you think. They are known more for playing games skillfully than making them. A lot of the games out of there are online based liked MMOS or FPS. You can check here for a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_developed_in_South_Korea The list probably isn't complete, but it's a start. Oddly enough, other than the MMOS on there, Metal Slug 4 is a game that stands out and that I've played, not sure how they only made 1 of 5(?). That being said, there is actually 1 indie game I've played from there after looking more closely and it was actually kinda fun, check out The Coma. It's trophies aren't that rare as it's not a real difficult game, but might be good for this month since it is spooky. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted October 16, 2022 Share Posted October 16, 2022 Damn that was quite the work...never thought of checking out games by developer nationality But...at a first glance, I am mainly hopping between Japan, US and Canada in terms of game teams. Ironically, there IS a game developed in Romania with trophies on PS4, and that is Yaga. But man... despite getting the folklore behind it and such, I have no mood to play that game. I am betraying my people, I know ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted October 18, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 18, 2022 Game: The Sojourn Analysis: I bought The Sojourn for $6.24 at the very end of May 2021. The cheapest discount to date according to PS Prices! Why The Sojourn? Do you see those big beautiful colors in the above image? That's what convinced me to get the game. Literally nothing else. I had no idea this would be a heavy-intensive puzzle game. I thought it would be slight exploration/narrative based with some platforming mechanics and uh... it doesn't. This is 100+ puzzles with some intriguing imagery and undeniably gorgeous graphics with terraforming topography as you progress through each of the 4 worlds but I really can't emphasize this enough, I didn't know what I was signing up for when I bought it. It's okay! I always buy my games on sale for a reason. I like to play stuff outside of my comfort zone. I have mentioned in the past that puzzle games aren't my genre of preference. This was an indirect method by myself to try and broaden my horizons and continue pushing the envelope. It turned out..... fine. A Good Puzzle Game But Not A Moldbreaker - I think that if you enjoy puzzle games, The Sojourn will offer a sufficient amount of challenge and enough complexity to keep you satiated for its run time. The core element of the game is phasing between two iterations of dimensions and with this option, you'll be able to swap places with statues that leave other statues behind. You need to manipulate the pathways so that you can make your way to the end goal, whether it be the finale of a challenge and releasing a wisp OR obtaining one of the many optional merit scrolls. 46 in total which will all have to be earned in order to obtain the platinum. As you progress, the game will add more and more gimmicks. A relic that makes a statue permanently active even when not entering the dark dimension. Chimes that will temporarily activate walkways with which your player character will always feel slightly too cement footed to cross in time. I have the rhythm chime seared into my skull with the 200+ times you'll hear it while playing. I have to give credit to the game for offering the additional challenge of the scroll at the end of each level's normal completion. Those who don't care about the platinum and find them too hard can simply move on. The game also has an excellent tracker which lets you know if you've collected the side scroll in each level. Unfortunately, for as much credit as I've given the game, this is not a puzzle game like The Witness that breaks the mold for me. I had a fine time with it. But it's not going to last long in my memory. Puzzle games need to have a unique gimmick to keep me intrigued but The Sojourn fell too much into the category of feeling like a lengthy math worksheet that while wholeheartedly digestible and well-crafted, is not something I actively seek out for an enjoyable gaming experience. Would I recommend The Sojourn? If you like puzzle games, sure! If you don't, this is definitely a pass. The game is very intense on its puzzles. The game has a very minimalist narrative that I think even YouTube story goblins who try and find as wispy and nebulous a thread as possible to craft how its some sort of: "brilliant, subtle story" would struggle at coming up with anything meaningful. I don't think I could pick the music soundtrack out of a lineup if you asked me to. I'll most remember the game for its ridiculously colorful and gorgeous visuals and the constant path creation as you progressed through each world that made you feel like the world was constructing itself as you progress. If you ever get stuck on a certain puzzle and need some help, please feel free to use this immaculate guide on YouTube with timestamps galore down to the specific puzzle across all 4 worlds. Forget pay the teachers, we need to PAY the hard-working video game guide creators of our time. I ultimately earned the 38.90% rarity platinum in 3 days and 23 hours. 3 platinums to go until the big 200 and I can't wait to review 198 since it's probably in the Top 5 most iconic games of the 2010s! Panda Score: 6.3 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.5 / 10 On 10/14/2022 at 0:21 PM, Grotz99 said: South Korea is going to be harder to do than you think. They are known more for playing games skillfully than making them. A lot of the games out of there are online based liked MMOS or FPS. You really weren't kidding! I feel like I have a pretty diverse taste in games but as someone who is a complete novice to the PC gaming scene, MMOs are a complete gap in my knowledge. After a bit of digging I did manage to find this article covering Top 10 South Korean games outside of the multiplayer realm. Although I think given their age I'm gonna end up playing a King of Fighters in the event I ever want to add the country to my map. On 10/16/2022 at 2:02 AM, Copanele said: Ironically, there IS a game developed in Romania with trophies on PS4, and that is Yaga. But man... despite getting the folklore behind it and such, I have no mood to play that game. I am betraying my people, I know YOOOOOOOOO!!! Thank you for mentioning this Copa! Yaga is a game I've seen numerous times on sale and yet never pulled the trigger on it(for a variety of reasons, backlog, seems like the trophy list is a bit of a pain). But to add Romania to the list??? I may be willing to take my chances! 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NZBigC Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 On 10/14/2022 at 11:53 AM, realm722 said: Finally, in Asia and Oceania, how is it even possible I've avoided a game from South Korea up until this point? I need to rectify that. Please feel free to give me some suggestions. New Zealand may also have some untapped potential. This is pretty awesome! A couple of very easy NZ made games would be any of the Rugby Challenge games. Another easy but very enjoyable Zelda like game would be Reverie. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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