Popular Post realm722 Posted October 23, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 23, 2022 Game: Undertale Analysis: I bought Undertale for $8.99 back in mid-September 2022. This is one of the hardest reviews I've ever had to write. There are a lot of reasons for that. It's difficult to talk about regular games in a vacuum. Let alone ones that shook the indie gaming scene to its core, garnered an utterly zealous and devout fanbase that is still active and thriving 7 years after its release(400k+ subscribers!), and somehow had a portion of those fanatical supporters be so ardent and forceful in their passion that they turned off segments of video game enjoyers from ever trekking into its waters in the first place. Undertale is one of a kind. It is one of the greatest video games ever created. I was unable to play it blind due to how far its scope reached. If, by some miracle, you have managed to remain untainted. I IMPLORE YOU to close this thread, buy it, & play it. It is that brilliant. I will not feel sorry if you don't enjoy it. Games of this ilk are so few and far between that it's worth offering a "bad" recommendation to someone who just "didn't get it" for the possibility of this game becoming your favorite for All-Time like it became for so many others back in 2015 when it released. The remainder of this review will be slathered in spoilers on top of spoilers. Enjoy. A Blemished Undertale Experience - I'd be lying to you if I said I played Undertale blind. In this peculiar, ever-growing thread of mine, I've mentioned THIS game on 5 different occasions. (Haven, Going Under, The Forgotten City, Ikenfell, & Paradise Killer). That's an absurd frequency considering I had never played it. Unsurprisingly, this is because Undertale's tentacles have reached places Toby Fox couldn't have possibly dreamed of back when he started the game's Kickstarter oh so many years ago. You've inevitably at least seen a caricature of the beloved Sans(a skeleton in a blue hoodie) at a cursory glance while browsing some internet forum. You've heard the first few seconds of Megalovania even if you didn't know where it came from. You may have heard the terms "Pacifist" or "Genocide" route. Undertale is a game where you're given the choice to be a hero and friend to all OR be the vilest, repulsive sad excuse of a human to descend upon an entire people. All of these things are true. It's what makes the game so memorable along with its humor, quirkiness, iconic soundtrack, and surprisingly mesmerizing moment-to-moment gameplay. I knew ALL of these things before booting up the game for the first time. I can't quite remember when I first had the game "spoiled" for me. I think it may have been watching Joseph Anderson's blind run (so pure in his naivity that Undertale diehards most have devoured it) but I can't truly remember. Tim Rogers' mentions it in his Games of the Decade review. The amount of fanfiction, fan theories, fan service, arguably overwhelm and outshined the original game itself at this point. YouTuber Super Eyepatch Wolf has a delightful video detailing this. All of this knowledge makes the game so painstaking to write about. How do you write something new about a thing that has been plucked and picked apart and sewn back together to death? Imagine someone trying to give an honest review of the TV show Breaking Bad in 2022 compared to 2008. Imagine trying to document a sincere and original experience of vacationing in New York that distinguishes itself from ever other firsthand travel blog. That's how it feels to write about Undertale. I can't pretend I played it as Toby intended. I don't want to sound like yet another skeptic who finally ceded to the masses and played it at a mob's behest and has to admit it "lived up to the hype". So. Let's not do that. Despite the fear of regurgitating what every other reviewer or part-time critiquer has said about the game, I'm just going to write about what I love about the game. If it sounds like every single other one you've read... oh well? Undertale's Arcs - I think Undertale is one of the most masterfully paced video games of All-Time. This is something extremely difficult to craft in video games particularly because players are in control at all times. If a player wants to spend multiple hours grinding in a certain zone, there's little the developers can do to stop them without directly intervening or guard-railing the player into a specific progression path. The player will of their own volition slow the game's story to a crawl. Yet Undertale, with its simple arcs (The Ruins w/ Torial, Snowdin w/ Sans & Papyrus, Waterfall w/ Undyne, Hotland w/ Alphys & Mettaton, Castle Finale w/ Asgore) manages to make each segment feel purposeful and momentous. The Ruins are lovely as they serve as a "we're not in Kansas anymore" vibe to any normal game enjoyer. This isn't your typical RPG. You're told to talk to the dummy, not to hit it. The game will be cheeky with a talking rock that flusters your progress. You'll be given the option to buy items from a spider bake sale. You'll have the choice to optionally take one candy from a candy bin or take multiple with no one (seemingly) watching whether you act truthfully or not. Most players who experience the game will think, "This game's pretty weird". Hopefully, in a good way. The neanderthal player who stamps forward with a "KILL KILL KILL" mentality as they've been trained in any other RPG they've played will be met forcefully by the game for their actions. In a cold, condemning, tactful manner, the game will chastise the player for acting like what they claim to be killing. A monster. Those unknowingly embarking on this path may realize their error and turn away. "Maybe I don't have to kill everything." Maybe you can act your way through encounters with cheeky dialogue and enchanting interactions. Of course, if the player is purposefully acting as a genocidal terrorist, the game will recognize this. Long gone are the fine puzzles and banter with the Skelebros. The town clears out in fear of you. No more need for petty, meaningless dialogue with NPCs. You're here for one thing and one thing only. To see everything the game has to offer and what Toby bothered programming for those who chose this course. The game's acclaim and long-standing reputation speak for itself. It can veer from whimsical, heartfelt humor to genuine terror on par with anything as unsettling as you'd find in a slow-burn horror flick. How I Decided To Play - One of the reasons I would have loved to play this game blind is the fact I am genuinely curious whether or not I would have realized I could spare Toriel in my very first run. Many players will naturally kill goat mom thinking they have no other choice. They need to proceed. The "spare" option from earlier that sparkled a bright yellow isn't available, so the game isn't really giving me much of a choice at this point. This leads many players down the typical neutral path. I think most will opt not to kill Papyrus given how he "spares" the player. Some may not realize Undyne's obvious hints that you can spare her unintentionally by running away. Would I have been that savvy? I truly don't know. I think I would have inevitably killed off some random mobs such as a Froggit before making the necessary connections. In my actual playthrough of the game, I opted to be a pacifist. How could I not? As I mentioned in my Wattam review, I love games that try to do something more than to be merely violent. It'd have been deeply unnerving if I asked for this and then decided to marauder my way without a care in the world through the charm the game is chock full of. You can't help but hang on to every word Sans tosses up the first time you meet him. The lovely way that Papyrus spares you if you get captured by him enough times yet keep escaping jail that he just decides to no longer fight you, yet you can go on a date with him then afterward. I love everything about Napstablook. I ran away from Undyne and gave her water from the water cooler. I feel a bit ashamed about the fact I needed help on two puzzles from YouTube. The flowers in the Waterfall section and the jumping pads in Hotland. Everything else I managed on my own. Dr. Alphys is adorable in her nerdiness and Mettaton is hilarious in his nonchalant cruelty. I don't think there was an entire segment of the game I actually disliked. Even getting your ass handed to you by the bosses is a thrill due to every tune being better than the last. Speaking of those bosses... I think I died 10 times in a row to Muffet. Which isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things but I definitely felt like it was taking me far longer than it should have given the platinum rarity Surprisingly Engaging & Tough Gameplay - One of the biggest reasons I'm thankful to have played Undertale for myself as opposed to merely enjoying it from the perspective of YouTubers and streamers is the fact I did not realize just how fun the moment to gameplay in the game actually is. If you're playing the game fighting every now and then, you'll be tasked with doing damage by opting to rhythmically click the X button just as the bar crosses the center threshold of the attack meter. Time it well, you do good damage. Time it poorly, and you'll miss. This is fairly basic. If you're trying to be peaceable, most encounters become a simple puzzle of sorts. You'll have to determine how to act based on how the monster is behaving. It's essential to read the text boxes from monsters in order to know how to act next. This makes dialogue meaningful and makes the player engage. This can be done playfully in encounters such as with the Tsunderplane or many dog guard enemies OR even more brilliantly in the many boss encounters. The fun of Undertale's gameplay loop comes from using your quick reflexes to try and keep your little feeble red heart alive from the onslaught of unending attacks. The game is NOT a cakewalk. Especially when you only have 20 health points and can take 3-4 hits at most before needing to heal. Each major boss fight switches up the gameplay. Papyrus can turn you into a blue heart and make it so you have to stay sedentary in order to avoid damage. Undyne will force you into a green shield and have to deflect attacks from all four sides in quick succession. Muffet will have you on 3 strings of web and leap up and down constantly in order to avoid her minions. It's quick-paced, hard-hitting, and far harder to perform than it looks. I had always found the gameplay in Undertale to be decent flavoring at best for its superior supplementary qualities (overall narrative, themes, meta-commentary, characters, music, etc..) Yet having played it, my respect for its gameplay grew immensely. This isn't an RPG you have to slog through to get to the "good parts". The gameplay is genuinely fun and it adds greatly to my inevitable replay of the game well into the future. GOAT Soundtrack - I know, I know. I'm really coming down from the mountain with two tablets in my hands with this statement. Guys, Undertale's music is good. I've mentioned this here and there in the past, but I am someone who struggles to notice soundtracks. I can play through entire games without finding a memorable or hit-home-worthy melody. This has happened to me on games that I've seen praised for their music. This should go to show you how nakedly transparent Toby Fox's musical excellence truly is. Seriously y'all. HOW IS THE MUSIC SO AMAZING? IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO BE THIS CONSISTENTLY BRILLIANT. I have a personal Video Game Music Playlist that I like to add tracks to. It makes for a nice trip down memory lane when I want to reminisce on games I've conquered. Most games will have 1-2 songs I found catchy. Games my ears were particularly fond of may have up to 4 or 5 which is a tremendous amount. Then there's Undertale. 18 SONGS??? That's nearly 10% of the entire playlist! I still can't decide which one is my favorite. Bonetrousle puts me in such a jolly mood. Dummy! makes me want to shake my ass. Spear of Justice sends my brain flying back to panicking about those damn yellow arrows that would attack from the opposite side they were initially arriving from. Metal Crusher makes me feel like the world is closing in on me. Spider Dance has absolutely no right to have a beat drop that disgustingly superb. Again, I know I'm just reiterating something everyone discovered well over half a decade ago but good lord. I haven't even dabbled into the bastion that is the remixed version of many Undertale songs. I genuinely don't think Toby can ever top himself with this and will happily declare that Undertale's OST is winning "Best Soundtrack" for my 2022 Game Awards. Voting over. It's only OCTOBER. Let's Talk About The Trophy List - As this is a trophy-hunting website, I would be remiss if I did not dedicate at least one paragraph to the very unique decision Toby Fox made when concocting the list of achievements for Undertale. For those unaware, you don't need to even beat Undertale to earn the platinum. You can play it around 70% of the way through and earn all 10 of the "progress the story" trophies. 4 of the trophies are nonsensical "get an item" filler while the remaining 15 trophies are related to an entirely pointless to the plot "Dog Shrine". This has led to some unflattering comments by trophy goblins. Clamoring for "why not add see pacifist ending / genocide ending" trophies. Listen. I don't know how much more slap-in-the-face-worthy Toby can make the central themes and ethos of Undertale than when Flowey explicitly states what many players likely did. "Do things in the game just to see what happens." The characters in the game aren't people to you. You just want to see what happens if you do X precisely because you're curious if the game will respond to that action. When it does, your curiosity is tickled. "Oh so the game DOES realize what I'm doing. Let me keep going." So on and so forth. It seems quite blatantly obvious to me that Toby did NOT want the trophy list or achievements to affect the way players played the game. Undertale does not have Achievements on Steam. The ones on PS4 are cheeky and ridiculous on purpose. The Dog Shrine is its own fun nonsense of a dog wasting a bunch of money the player collected on superfluous garbage. I'm glad Toby let players play the game as they wished without being overly concerned about many different endings or paths. Let players do that if they wish of their own volition. I do think some additional biting commentary could have been added to the PS4-edition if Toby truly wanted to push the envelope and call out trophy hunters for their cold, unsympathetic ways of playing but that may be asking too much of a man whose already stuffed so much into a small package. I will also concede that I think if defeating Sans was a trophy, the plat is easily ultra rare and I would have broke my brain potentially being incapable of defeating him. Would I recommend Undertale? Absolutely! Undertale is a game whose greatness grows more on players who have played lots of video games. I sincerely believe this. Yet, due to its immense popularity. I can't help but feel like a little bit of a poser. I love this game. I don't love it the way some people love it. I'm not going to play for hundreds of hours trying to find 1-2 unseen bits of dialogue. I'm not going to spend tens of hours reading various theories or become a constant sh!tposter in an online community. I missed the wagon on it, in a way. All that I loved about the game was reaffirmed by having played it, and while that's great, it's not the same as someone who loved the game genuinely in all its purity when it first released. Seriously, some of the stories people will write in the YouTube comments section of full-on weeping over the game on how it impacted and changed them is not something I can relate to. I envy the experience of those who got to enjoy it that way. It's for that reason that I'm going to try and avoid at all costs any spoilers for Deltrarune, Toby Fox's sequel that is currently 2/5 complete and available for the public. Chapter 1 was released in 2018. Chapter 2 in 2021. It's impossible for Toby to recreate the success of his original masterpiece. But if I can enjoy something with just a fraction of the sincerity and soul of his first auteur endeavor, something tells me it'll go down as a Top 20 game of All-Time for me regardless. I'm thrilled to finally put Undertale in my gaming arsenal and hope the review served as a nice little reminder for those who enjoyed it way back when. I earned the 46.69% rarity platinum in 2 days and 1 hour. I'll be taking a bit of hiatus for the next few weeks but hope to come back with a vengeance in November. See y'all then! Panda Score: 8.7 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.8 / 10 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted October 26, 2022 Share Posted October 26, 2022 Oh man...I forgot to press reply I heard a lot of great things about Undertale (and I saw the oddly disturbing SuperEyepatchWolf video too about it). However this might be the only game that I will never play on principle ? My sister terrorized me with this sentence "you have to play this game omg it's the best shit ever" for so long that I promised every time she raves about Undertale I will delay my gameplay by one year. I think I reached 265 years (more or less), which...I think it's outside my lifespan unfortunately. Had to share this story, because it's kinda Undertale-ish. Glad you enjoyed the game! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HelixNebula_x Posted October 27, 2022 Share Posted October 27, 2022 On 23/10/2022 at 6:01 AM, realm722 said: I'll be taking a bit of hiatus for the next few weeks but hope to come back with a vengeance in November. See y'all then! Not gonna lie, this genuinely upset me. This is my favourite checklist to read on the slow days at work! Congrats on Undertale btw! I read the piece even though I haven't played it, may eventually get to it but like @Copanele has said, the hype around it and the almost obsessive nature of some of it's fans really did put me off. Megalovania might be enough of a banger to get me to play though. Enjoy your time away, but come back with plenty of reviews when you do! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted October 28, 2022 Share Posted October 28, 2022 On 10/27/2022 at 5:32 AM, HelixNebula_x said: Not gonna lie, this genuinely upset me. This is my favourite checklist to read on the slow days at work! Congrats on Undertale btw! I read the piece even though I haven't played it, may eventually get to it but like @Copanele has said, the hype around it and the almost obsessive nature of some of it's fans really did put me off. Megalovania might be enough of a banger to get me to play though. Enjoy your time away, but come back with plenty of reviews when you do! It's been....5 years since I played Undertale and I remember it being fun, but honestly not super ground breaking. I didn't know there was a cult following around it until I read these comments, but I would still give it a go. It's a pretty quick game. The encounters were always fun with a little bit of a challenge. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted November 8, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 8, 2022 Game: Machinarium Analysis: I bought this game for $2.99 all the way back in early February 2022 and it's about damn time given the 100k+ owners who've played it on the PS3/Vita versions. Why Machinarium? While I am not a very big fan of the point-and-click genre, I do enjoy playing simple, sweet 100%'s to start off each month. Machinarium is honestly one of the oldest games I've played and cataloged in this entire thread which is a little bit crazy. It was originally released back in 2009 and I genuinely think that's where a lot of the game's shine comes from. Back then, the proverbial indie dam hadn't yet been broken. Titles that did pop through stood out and were lauded. Yet market saturation has made it so that this level of indie (an honest, basic game with some admittedly endearing charm) struggles to stand out amongst all the other passion projects. How does it hold up in 2022? Machinarium Is Still Wickedly Charming - I should preface this paragraph with a very clear statement. I don't play point-and-click adventure games blind. I don't even make an effort to. I know that may be jarring to some and it undoubtedly changes the experience compared to many, but it is the sort of genre formula that was dated in my youth and not something I care much to engage with nowadays. I don't begrudge anyone who loves those old LucasArts/Sierra games. In fact, I admire them. It's cool as hell to hear someone fawn over a genre that has by and large been lost to the gallows of time. The pool of games to select from has thinned greatly. You're talking about going back to the well on a remastered Grim Fandango or dabbling in the latest Return to Monkey Island release. Why do I play games from a genre I don't care for all that much? Well for one, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't! and more importantly, I still found some enjoyment out of the 2 hours I spent with the game. By playing with a guide, I avoided some of the headaches of trying to figure out what acute and very specific solution the developers wanted out of me such as combining two items I've gathered or using this item in conjunction with another while moving across two screens and largely got to focus on the charming interactions Machinarium offers. You're a small robot with a surprisingly lengthy moveset that has to navigate this world. You're given the option to help out those in this oppressed society such as bailing some friends out of prison, disabling a bomb, and rescuing your girlfriend from captivity. There is no dialogue in the game outside of some grunts and inane ramblings by specific NPCs but the game still manages to convey a ton of emotion. Is it revolutionary? No. Would it get as much praise now in 2022 as it did in 2009? Probably not. But the game is an enjoyable, brisk journey and I think you could do much worse given how much filth is clogging up far too much real estate of the Playstation Store page. Would I recommend Machinarium? If you enjoy point-and-click games or don't mind playing with a guide, absolutely! If not, or you loathe the option of playing with one, I'd say this is a pass. I'll go through different moods with this. Sometimes I don't mind having my laptop right next to me while playing a game and hitting queue for queue what I'm seeing on screen. Other times I just want to zone out and play a repetitive, addictive, enjoyable gameplay loop or challenge so I can dedicate 100% attention while listening to a podcast or music. Machinarium is an abysmal game for that, so make sure you know what you're signing up for. The game has a handful of puzzles that are a bit baffling. The jigsaw got me so lost following the game I just randomly kept flipping the various knobs until I accidentally stumbled into the solution. The beads puzzle towards the very end of the game has 77k+ views which for a game of this ilk is insane and should tell you how many folks got stuck on it. My goblin brain wept and I wanted to mention it as a precautionary tale for others. I earned the 54.77% rarity 100% completion in 1 hour and 52 minutes. Aside from that, I'm super excited to be back into the swing of things. I've got some absolutely stellar games on the catalog I'm excited to play to wrap up the 2022 calendar year before getting into award season. I'm also convinced I'm witnessing the best Dolphins team of the last 20+ years and my love for my Samoan Prince only blooms with each 300+ yard, 3 TD performance. WE WANT BUFFALO!!! Panda Score: 6.3 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 1.8 / 10 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MD_91 Posted November 8, 2022 Share Posted November 8, 2022 On 11/10/2022 at 9:05 PM, realm722 said: Game: Party Golf 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. Can't help but question my life choices a bit any time I'm juggling more than one controller for the sake of a trophy I've almost bought this a few times between the very cheap price it's often available for and being a casual golf fan but I know I'm lying to myself if I said liking golf would be my primary reason for playing it, co-op games can really be a gold mine for easy low rarity trophies if you can be shameless about it 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted November 10, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 10, 2022 Game: Rollerdrome Analysis: I bought Rollerdrome for $19.79 back in early October 2022 and boy oh boy did this game live up to every expectation I had for it! Why Rollerdrome? Rollerdrome is one of the rare few games I actually discovered from a State of Play. Typically, expectations for these showcases are fairly low. I by and large don't find many games to be overly captivating at first glance. Let alone those that are trying to appeal to mass audiences in events such as E3 or the Game Awards. But during the June 2nd, 2022 State of Play, Rollerdrome immediately captivated me. I was struck by its distinct, comic book-esque aesthetic and the moment I saw that you'd be balancing doing tricks on rollerblades to taking down a gauntlet of enemies in an arena, I was sold. Hell, when SkillUp raved about the game back in mid-August, I was double sold. This game was exactly up my alley as a super-fun repetitive cycle high-skill ceiling game that you could pour hours into before realizing you're neglecting life responsibilities. All that was left was for me to actually play it. World-Building Done Right - If you care deeply about stories in games, Rollerdrome isn't going to have much to offer. I am not someone who cares all that much whether a game has a story or not. What I DO enjoy is a game that knows gameplay is king yet offers enough flavoring and seasoning to the game with its story that it only adds to the atmosphere without detracting away from the meat and potatoes. Rollerdrome does precisely this. Basically, "Rollerdrome" is an extreme sport in the not-so-far-off dystopian future. X Games just doesn't cut it for modern citizens seeking out their evening entertainment. How can you even enjoy a competition if there aren't some actual stakes on the line? You're a competitor who can quite literally die while performing the sport you love. The game treats this as a real, global competition that has captivated the hearts and minds of millions. Before each stage of the tournament (preliminaries, quarter-finals, semi-finals, & championships) you'll be given an opportunity to walk around a small environment and bask in some brief world-building. Walk around the lockers for a bit. View some of the various personalities of your competitors (some friendly, some jerks). Take a look at the Rollerdrome-mandated uniform on a poster. Flip through a few slides on a projector. Read a newspaper heading or two and see how the sport is mired in controversy over its violent nature. Then, before you know it, you're thrust onto your blades and immediately sent into the action to compete. I absolutely love it. Hell, I wanted more world-building and optional side content which is not something I say for most games. I am a sports freak who loves sports. We need more video games where unique sports/tournament competitions are allowed to thrive. My favorite arc of the entire 165-episode anime series Hunter x Hunter was the Heavens Arena. Why? Because tournaments are awesome and are an absolutely stellar environment for rising stakes, fostering relationships, & controversy/drama. Please, game developers, make more games using this template. Rollerdrome is pure Gaming Goodness in a High-Calorie Energy Drink Get Ready To Juggle - The gameplay in Rollerdrome is phenomenal. I shouldn't need to tell you this. Look at this footage of me, an incompetent baby, finishing an entire match in a single combo. That is the opening stage of the game. I, in my infinite naivety, did not know just how complex and chaotic the game would get by the end of my time with it. What makes the game feel so good? First of all, you're always moving forward once you start moving. There are ramps everywhere. You are encouraged to engage in tricks & grinds to earn points. None of these tricks are overly complex. The most complicated ones are only 3 button prompts long in order to initiate. A lot of them look rad as hell. (I'm quite found of the "coffin" & "pretzel"). I personally found myself doing tricks far more often than grinds and preferring them due to being far superior points-wise in order to build up your combo (especially when you start rotating/flipping). But this isn't Tony Hawk Pro Skater. You don't actually ever risk falling off your blades or losing all of your momentum if you "stick" to a trick for too long. The game will always keep you moving forward and Kara Hassan will always recover in some elegant fashion so you can keep your eyes on the real prize. What is that? Actually shooting down the enemies within the arena. You will earn 4 guns through the main campaign. Dual Pistols - good, simple weapon. Excellent with a full clip to takedown a Polybeam. Shotgun - My personal favorite weapon. Good, meaty gun with enough ammo to consistently do sizable damage. Grenade Launcher - The weapon I used the least. Good if you can't really reach an area well from a distance and just need to do some damage. Z-11 - Best weapon despite the fewest bullets. Supercharged it does the most damage in the game. Great to snipe from a huge distance away. Of course, when you fire a gun, you'll be using up ammunition. How do you restore ammunition? Well duh, why do ya think I mentioned the tricks/grinds from earlier? Rollerdrome's gameplay loop is all about juggling a bunch of necessary actions in order to let you down other, extremely important necessary actions. You can't just fire off your guns endlessly and ignore tricks. You can't just do tricks and ignore shooting. They both work in tandem with one another. Getting through a stage skating by despite suffering tons of damage is one thing. The real fun in this game, and I'm gonna say this extra loud for the people in the back, is the Devil May Cry 5 maximizing of your combo. You need to kill enemies to raise it. If you take too much damage or go too long without killing an enemy, you'll lose it. When you're just getting your bearings this won't seem all that important. But by the end of the campaign, the developers specifically make "beat the stage in one combo" a challenge from then onwards which makes it blatantly clear how much fun is derived from seeing the smaller number become a bigger number. Loser game show music should play if you fumble it. I think someone could write a thesis on all the mechanics in Rollerdrome. Seriously. I haven't done it enough justice here. As you progress through each stage you'll have more and more enemies added that further make you think and juggle between switching between weapons, dodging, keeping a combo up, doing tricks, and making sure you're actually firing off weapons to do damage. I'll also emphasize - the challenge of the game does NOT come from aiming. The aim assist is extremely generous. If you're within range and fire R2, the bullets will hit for the pistols/shotgun. The Z-11 is the one where aiming most matters. Precision isn't the focus. Trying to keep your head on a swivel and looking badass while doing so is. If I had to levy a complaint against the gameplay, it'd be that some sections are super awkward to reach due to my never mastering the "air out" maneuver. You see, sometimes in stages, you aren't going to want to ride up and do a trick every time. Sometimes you'll want to get over the ramp. You hold L1 to do this. Yet I always felt the game struggled in this aspect and it made some of the sections in each of the mall levels a bit unnecessarily tricky. Not that it was meant to be difficult, but that it was just so difficult to tune on top of all the other things the player will be trying to do that getting from point A to point B when trying to change which plain of terrain you're on gave me more trouble than it was worth. It's no surprise some of my favorite levels were the open-area desert ones as well as the snowy regions by various bases. Let's Talk About The Platinum - Rollerdrome has absolutely no business being a <10% plat. In all honesty, it should be 30-40%. Why do I say that? Well, it's time for me to reveal I've been a fraud this entire time. I love the gameplay in Rollerdrome. I can snort it from now until 2024. But the developers, for whatever reason, decided to add some absurd challenge requirements for the latter stages and most egregiously in the "Out for Blood" campaign. (Just a retread of all the stages in the main campaign, except now everything's slightly harder and the enemies are giving you a full front assault to try and knock out Kara Hassan for good). The issue with this is... the game also allows "assist" options such as 1) no taking damage, 2) infinite "reflex" time, 3) infinite ammo which turns the high-thrilling action into something kindergartners eat for lunch. These assist options do not disable trophies, they just make your score ineligible for the leaderboards. I'm fine with assist options. I think this game would still be kicking my ass and would likely be a <2% ultra-rare if they weren't available. But man... when your gameplay is this good, I kinda wished they had forced it on me so I could have spent time mastering all of the mechanics instead of being able to take the irresistible easy way out flipping them all on and blasting through my final 2 hours of the game. I know, I know. "Nobody forced the assist options on you". Heck, maybe it's a good thing since it'll hopefully get more people to check the game out but I really would have preferred if the game had put in less difficult challenges (seriously, finish the game in one combo + complete it in an absurdly quick completion time stop getting creative after a while) yet revoked the option to make them completely arbitrary. As a challenge to all those reading, I ask everyone out here to beat my #128th ranked score on Civetta Summit of 1,454,246 to offer proof that you mastered Rollerdrome's mechanics. In all seriousness, I think this is the only slight gripe I'll hold against the game. Everything else was pristine. I earned the 9.31% rarity platinum in 2 weeks and 1 day. Would I recommend Rollerdrome? Absolutely, 100%. It is genuinely a Top 5 game of the year candidate for me in terms of pure gameplay. Upon doing some research for this review, I also have to give a huge shoutout to @PlutoRico. I discovered Rollerdrome candidly without knowing anything about the studio behind it or whether or not the developers had a track record of coming through. The studio is called Roll7. They're based in Britain and are the creators of the... OlliOlli franchise. Wait a second! That's the franchise Pluto wrote such a glowing review about that I swore I'd pick it up next time it was on sale! That was way back in May of 2022. The original OlliOlli game has not gone on sale since then but I now make a double pinky promise to play it. The fact that the dudes behind this game made that one has me whole-heartedly convinced more than ever that I'll love it. I'm also hoping to add Roll7 to an esteemed class of developers that are automatic Day 1 purchases for their next release. I hope they add some DLC stages in the future so I have an excuse to revisit the game a few months down the line. With Rollerdrome in the books as my 199th platinum, it's time for the big two double zero. I think it's time. Yee-haw! Panda Score: 8.6 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.4 / 10 (neutered because of the assist options. without, 8.8/10. with them enabled, 2.2/10) 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted November 30, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 30, 2022 Game: Desperados III (200th Platinum Special) Analysis: I bought Desperados III for $19.79 back in late September 2022. If you'd like to know why I've seemingly been on hiatus for the last 3 weeks, this game is why! Why Desperados III? After the surprise smash hit that was Shadow Tactics, I immediately wishlisted Desperados III as it was the latest game released by the wonderful folks over at Mimimi Games. This German developer took over the reins of the Desperados franchise that saw some niche hit real-time tactics games in the early 2000s on the PC. I'll be honest and say that I have absolutely zero familiarity with the past games. You can find some absolutely lovely archival footage of the originals on YouTube. With that being said, I hope I've made things sufficiently clear that I will not be judging this game with how well it falls into the template of the original two games. Rather, I'll be comparing it quite a bit to Shadow Tactics as the similarities are undeniable. Shadow Tactics But Make It Western - Let's start off this review in a surprisingly negative fashion... I was almost floored by just how identical the start of Desperados III was to St:BotS. Video game enjoyers do not know the sheer amount of painstaking effort that must be exerted in order to release a video game, let alone a good one. Yet even I couldn't fault someone if they said that, "yo, it kinda feels like they just copied everything from Shadow Tactics but lathered it in some Clint Eastwood & John Wayne and called it a day." John Cooper is Cowboy Hayato. Hector (big beefy guy) LITERALLY SOUNDED EXACTLY LIKE Mugen to me except now he was putting on a Spanish accent to his voice with the occasional "amigo". They swapped out the old slow vet Takuma for an old slow mercenary in McCoy. Nearly all of their skills are near identical. Hector has Yuki's flute. Kate can disguise herself and blind enemies like Aiko. Colt has Mugen's sake but it's now a bag. Cooper throws a knife instead of Hayato's shuriken. In terms of enemy guards, you have your generic soldier fodder, poncho guards (which are straw hats), and long coats (a less cool version of samurai). I'd argue that around 80% of the core game mechanics have been transferred over virtually untouched minus some obvious visual dressing swapping the Feudal Japan look for Wild West American aesthetic. Why Is That Bad, Didn't You Enjoy Shadow Tactics? - This was a question I kept asking myself for the first few levels of Desperados III. "I freaking loved the gameplay loop back then, why am I now having a bit of trouble acclimating to it here when it's practically the exact same?" A little bit of it could be goblin gamer brain. I typically don't look up gameplay previews of games before I play them (because if I did I'd probably talk myself out of playing things I could enjoy) so when I finally got thrust into the swing of things there was an odd familiarity in a slightly off sense given everything looked different but played virtually the same. In general, I prefer feudal Japan to cowboy America so that may have been another factor. Still, I found the game also lacking in two other key factors compared to its predecessor. 1) I didn't vibe with this cast of characters as much as the previous one. I couldn't help but compare them. There is no lovable Yuki in this class. Kate (the femme fatale) is cool and she's taking on the DeVitt Company since they went after her family and killed her uncle but her chemistry with Cooper (the main protagonist who is out for revenge for the man who killed his father) isn't as strong. Hector felt like a worse version of Mugen in a lot of ways. Admittedly, I did quite enjoy Dr. McCoy's general vibe and his: "like a moth to the flame" line whenever you lured an enemy in with your bag was undoubtedly one of my favorite repetitive ticks of all the playable characters. That and Kate's: "these violent delights..." Still... 2) The humor in this game didn't hit quite like the first. As opposed to Shadow Tactics where I was at some points keeled over with belly laughter at the repetition of some guards' lines, Desperados III did not have that. You are still encouraged to do goofy things, such as dumping a body on a character to fall into an accidental game over state, but nothing will ever compare with: "HIDING IN THE BUSHES? CRAWLING THROUGH THE THICKET?" I will concede this likely comes from the fact I'm just far better at the game now that I have so much experience with the genre compared to being a complete noob idiot when first playing ST. But that's enough negativity... I, like Cassy with CrossCode, was being dumb. It's time to talk about when I hit the turning point with this game... You're looking at the Red Lantern. The classiest whorehouse this side of New Orleans. You go in there and looney tunes takeout enemy by enemy before the poor ladies all end up asking: "where has everyone gone?" The Revelation That Was Isabelle - On Mission 9 (there are 15 total missions in the game, but honestly it's more like 13 since 2 of them are largely for story background purposes), you will be introduced to the final playable character in the game. Isabelle. She's a broad from New Orleans who has far and away the most unique skillset in the entire game. She's an alleged "swamp witch" and this means her two strongest abilities include being able to mind control enemies as well as "connecting" enemies with a small prick which means that any harm that comes from one enemy marked will befall the "connected" enemy soldier no matter how far or isolated he is from the harm being inflicted. It was a complete revelation gameplay wise and combined with her rapid movement and ability to swim and climb vines alongside Cooper, she became my favorite character to play as whenever she was available for a mission. Her southern sass and teasing of the vet McCoy before they eventually warmed up to each other was another element that made me enamored with her character. Oh, and she has a distraction cat named Stella which serves as the game's tanooki equivalent. I cannot underestimate how much adding one unique set of abilities to an already established cast of characters revolutionized the game for me and distinctly made Desperados III its own thing compared to me saying: "oh yea I'm just playing a slightly lesser version of Shadow Tactics." The More I Played, The More I Enjoyed - With this small breakthrough, my appreciation for the subtler nuances of the game grew. For my 1st playthrough of each mission, I tried to opt for an extremely slow and methodical approach where I tried to not kill any enemies. In hindsight, I realize this is very likely not what the developers had in mind. You're encouraged to occasionally be loud and use your guns. This is a Western, after all. Yet I was bringing over my mentality from Shadow Tactics here. Once I started to embrace some of the more polished and refined systems, my love for the game began to grow. For example, "showdown mode" in this game is fixed from my complaints in my previous post! Time actually does completely stop and you're able to lay out a full gameplan for all of your characters. The only exception to this is on "Desperados" difficulty which you're not required to play on except for one level for a trophy and holy CRAP is that hard. I managed to get it done in a reasonable amount of time since I played it on Mission 2 but good lord that would be a nightmare otherwise. Enemies have Terminator-level detection and shoot on sight like you're in a gang war. Other elements I enjoyed were the level design. This game is genuinely beautiful. My favorite levels were undoubtedly the vibrant nightlife settings such as taking a walk around New Orleans with Kate, McCoy, & Isabelle or trying to swoop in and kidnap a man from his own house in Casa DeVitt. I also would be remiss if I didn't mention the abundance of additional content the developers went through in adding "Baron challenges" which are unique missions you can handle unrelated to the story or some generously included DLC maps. The Platinum Journey - Part of what makes these real-time tactics games so fun is the replayability factor once you go from not knowing the layout of the level to trying to complete very specific tasks in order to achieve the 100+ medals available. On each mission, there are 8 possible medals to be earned. 1 of them is always for beating the level on Hard and 1 is for beating the level within an allotted speedrun time. For speedrun haters - YOU CAN EARN THE PLATINUM WITHOUT DOING A SINGLE SPEEDRUN. I personally earned it just fine only earning one of them. A lot of these medals are either obligatory "complete the mission taking the left or right route" as well as putting on some self-imposed challenges such as never using a disguise, never using firearms, etc... Once you know what you're doing and have garnered enough familiarity with a level, most of these challenges will be a cakewalk, especially on Easy difficulty which I highly recommend once you're in clean-up mode. While doing this, be sure to scout the trophy guide for level-specific achievements for which there are many. You can also go out of your way killing the various hidden Mimimi developers, using Cooper's double-shot gun kill (something I largely ignored for my entire 1st playthrough so I used it a bunch while going for medals), luring gunmen with Kate, killing enemies with Hector's whistle+Bianca, and so forth. Here are the medals I earned by the time I reach completion which was just a hash over 50 hours. It really is super doable given the generous ability to experiment with the save/load function. I ultimately earned the 8.71% rarity platinum in 2 weeks and 3 days! Would I recommend Desperados III? Yes!... with a couple of caveats. 1) Did you thoroughly enjoy Shadow Tactics? If you did, even if Westerns may not be your thing (as in my case), I still think this is a fundamentally good game you'll enjoy. 2) If you didn't enjoy Shadow Tactics, nothing done here will change your mind or revolutionize your position on the genre. It's a very specific formula the folks over at Mimimi Games have created and I will gladly continue to consume it if they go for another radically different landscape in their next game and just make some minor tweaks and improvements here and there. They've managed to scratch an itch I never knew I even had and it's why I'm super excited that they announced their 3rd real-time tactics game, Süßkartoffel. Apparently, it means "sweet potato" in German. I'd absolutely love to play a game of this ilk in a setting I'm unfamiliar with and I completely trust this team to lead me to a good time considering they haven't failed me yet. I hope my propaganda for the genre encourages at least a handful of you to check them out since they're understandably niche but a blast if you have the patience to sit down and get engaged with them! Panda Score: 8.35 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.4 / 10 P.S. - It's good to be back. It's been far too long. My Samoan Prince, Tua, is leading my Dolphins to the best start to a season since 2001. I have snorted the 2022 FIFA World Cup like it's going out of style. The Heat are getting healthy and Bam is becoming the scorer fans have wanted him to be since Year 3. Life is good. Be seeing y'all around, take care! Spoiler Desperados III Start Date: Nov. 11th 2022 (Friday) I’m so excited. After Shadow Tactics, I really hope/believe this is 200th plat milestone worthy. LESSGO! Decent 1st level. Teaching all the mechanics I learned in Shadow Tactics. Vision mode, hiding bodies, showdown mode appears to now PAUSE time which is excellent. Okay mysterious purple dude we saved Sid gonna be the Mugen of this game??? I love his voice That 1st level was fun. Managed to get through it without killing any enemies, dunno if that’s a badge or not DAMN KATE JUST LIT UP HIGGINS OOF Hah - we made it to the end of the level without swapping out Kate’s bloody dress! The coin + perfume makes it hilariously easy to sneak past them guards The McCoy/Hector level is hilarious. I marauded like 67 dudes with Hector. Back on Nov. 16th after a few days off. We’re on to Eagle Falls! Hector’s VA HAS to Mugen’s lmao they sound exactly the same Damn hector spit that sauce to Rosie….. SHE’S MARRIED HECTOR Okay Isabelle is far and away the coolest character moveset yet 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted December 3, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 3, 2022 Game: South of the Circle Analysis: I bought South of the Circle for $8.24 last night and played it through to completion in a single sitting! Why South of the Circle? Most of you should know the drill by this point. I'm always on the hunt for crisp, unique, and succinct 100% experiences whenever there's a new sale available and this game caught my eye in particular due to the embrace seen by the two main characters in the above screenshot. I love me some romance. Romance is quite possibly the most unmined and untouched market of excellence in video games at the moment. I know there are dating simulators and visual novels that may tickle some people's fancy, or even the half-hearted relationship efforts found in Harvest Moon or Mass Effect where you can get yourself a partner in addition to the other hundreds of things available in the game... but a game where romance and relationships are the central theme and manages to keep the player compelled for the full playthrough... I'd love to play that game. I wrote about it when I reviewed Haven. I did NOT expect South of the Circle to be some revolutionary discovery, but I figured it'd prove to be a fun detour that would at least dabble in some fields I wish games would explore more. I got that and then some! My Spoiler-Free Review of the Game - I would only recommend South of the Circle to players who are comfortable enjoying games with virtually no gameplay input. The absolute maximum amount of input required from the player is to slowly move the protagonist forward through the various settings in rhythm with the conversations taking place. You'll explore a few objects in some environments, and aside from that, 80% of the gameplay input will be deciding how you want your responses to come across during interactions with other characters. (You can be shy/nervous, straightforward/bold, curious/forward-thinking, etc...) There will be some small decisions you can make to slightly alter the course of the story but nothing too significant. It's all flavoring. The biggest points I must give the game is 1) The story takes place in a period of time from the past. 1960s United Kingdom. It covers issues at the time with the Soviets and the plight of a lecturer trying to get published at Cambridge. 2) The voice acting is marvelous through and through and most importantly with your romantic interest, Clara. These two hooks were what kept me intrigued for the full 3-hour runtime. If that sounds like something that would tickle your fancy, give it a shot! Now time for SPOILERS. The Nuances of Peter & Clara's Relationship - I love both of these characters. Peter is a meek person. You will play flashback sequences dating back to even his early childhood demonstrating this. His father is upset that he's not "man" enough. He's been drowning in a paper for several years regarding radiation in the clouds and predicting weather. He needs more time and more readings but his overbearing colossal prick of a professor continues to press the weight down on how important this assignment is. By happenstance one day, he meets a young woman. Clara. She's also a lecturer trying to get published! They strike up an innocent friendship that slowly builds with more and more interactions. You have a choice to take a politically active stance as Peter over nuclear disarmament for the UK to set an example to the Soviets... you can opt not to and just bury yourself in your work. I chose that option. As you continue to try and get ahold of this paper that's been tormenting you, Clara offers a solution by taking you to an isolated cottage where she grew up so you can obtain clean, untampered data regarding clouds. You agree. You go out there, the relationship blooms, and all of a sudden Clara has given your paper a new sense of direction and vibrancy it lacked previously. You go back to your superior with your new findings and woah... they're loving it! Of course, this is the 1960s UK and that means there's some disagreement over whether or not Clara's name should be featured. After all, you would not receive nearly the amount of credit and praise you deserve for having slaved over this assignment if you included her name on it. She also may or may not have a friend who is deep in Soviet ties and that could look quite unsavory on Cambridge given the scandal of the Cambridge Four months prior. This is when Peter's meekness burns him. It was kind, understandable, and even endearing up until now. But now he lets his superiors push him around into cutting the woman who undeniably aided him out of the picture. Understandably, this leads to a blow-up of their relationship where you're also chastised for all your previous "significant" decisions during the course of the game. There is no fairy-tale ending. It... hurt. I loved listening to Clara. I can listen to that Scottish Edinburgh accent until the cows come home. She was ultimately correct in her cutting remark that he'd end up supporting the old boys club over her. Whether intentional or not, that proved true. While it may not have been the ending I wanted... it felt like the ending I deserved. Despite the wistful conclusion, I really enjoyed seeing their relationship and it was easily the most enjoyable part of the entire experience for me. Along with Peter's inner turmoil over his paper and trying to manage his work relationships from his professor to his peers. All of My Other Scrambled Thoughts - The slightly less engaging side of the story was the one that you'd think would be more high-octane and enthralling. It's the section of the story where you play as Peter and have crashlanded in Antarctica with your Australian pilot. You're now forced to go explore various bases (British, Soviet, Norwegian) to try and find some help. You will jump back and forth between the present and the past with all the details I mentioned in the above paragraph. Ultimately, you'll discover that Peter is in Antarctica because he accepted a job offer from the government to explore "cloud radiation" in the Antarctic which ended up being a lie. This, as it always is with governments, had to do with monitoring the enemy and always had an underhanded layer to it. I'll reiterate, these sections are fine. The portion where you're getting saved by a Russian engineer and finally escape before an atomic bomb goes off is solid. The interactions between you, the Engineer, and the pilot are all solid. I just... kinda wished I was able to complete the date with Clara when we went to the fair instead. I also wished they didn't force "engagement" by making you click the response when there's no other choice. The game will say it anyway for you if you take too long to reply. I get that they want to "justify" player engagement by not making you feel like you're going 5+ minutes without touching the controller but making me hold triangle isn't exactly riveting engagement either. Would I recommend South of the Circle? Yes, with a few caveats mentioned earlier. Do NOT play it if you don't care much for stories. Do NOT play it if you need interesting gameplay. DO play it if you'd like to see a slice-of-life experience from 60+ years ago. DO play it if you enjoy damn good voice acting and are curious how a blossoming relationship can evolve. Ultimately, the game is 3 hours long and it held my attention enough to complete it in one sitting despite being extremely tired towards the end of it (some scenes do drag on a little but again, I think that may be the tiredness speaking). The trophies are all incredibly straightforward minus a few missable ones for exploring all items but you can use this aid to help you with that. I ultimately earned 48.70% rarity 100% completion in 3 hours and 6 minutes which unintentionally makes me the 2nd fastest speedrunner to date! This is easily one of the best 100% games I've played this year and I'm glad to have added it to my arsenal. Panda Score: 6.7 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 1.3 / 10 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted December 7, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 7, 2022 (edited) Game: Road 96 Analysis: I bought Road 96 for $9.99 at the start of November 2022 and man is this one of my favorite surprises of the year! Why Road 96? A lot of times I don't have a very interesting for how I discovered a game. Either I found it on sale and thought it looked decent so I took a flyer on it or I've been coveting a game for a while due to seeing a trailer that intrigued me. Road 96 is incredibly different. I had never heard of this game in my life. Yet, one day, while reading one of @Charizarzar's wonderful Member Interviews (in this case @breakingthegreen) he mentioned it amongst his Top 5 games. I had heard of Super Mario Galaxy, Heavy Rain, Legend of Zelda: Breathe of the Wild, & Life is Strange but to find a game I'd never heard of that was available on modern hardware... I immediately added it to my wishlist! Let the fairly cupcake platinum rarity be damnded. If it ended up being a total trainwreck, I'd be able to make a verbose rant about being buyer beware of taking random recommendations in the future. Instead, I think I can add myself to the list of unpaid spokesman who are gonna advertise this game at every possible turn given how remarkably unique it is. My Spoiler-Free Recommendation of this Game - This is a game that I truly believe is best experienced COMPLETELY blind. I believe it's 100% worth its asking price. But I understand why one would be hesitant to trust a blind recommendation. So here's my elevator pitch of why you should check it out. You're a teenager. Your country SUCKS. Due to the fact your country sucks, you've made it a goal to run away from home and escape via the border to another land. In order to do this, you'll need the assistance of a unique cast of characters. Some cool, some not so cool. You will explore various scenarios from a first-person perspective and have to navigate your interactions with these people. Do you treat them kindly and aid when they need assistance or steal money/food from them as you need to look out for yourself first and foremost? Once you've reached the end of your journey (whether you survived, escaped, were caught and imprisoned, or died), you repeat the cycle all over again with another teenager. Still interacting with these same characters yet now knowing just slightly more about them due to your life experience as a previous teen. I guess all the teenagers in Petria share the same knowledge pool like something out of Zero Escape's morphogenetic field? The point is this. While the dialogue can be a teensy bit cringy at times and the political metaphors can have all the subtly of a sledgehammer... I really enjoyed a great deal of it. There's a surprising amount of exploration in each scenario and there are "mini-games" where you'll be challenged with the controller so it's not like this is a pure narrative walking simulator either. Some extra points I'll lay in its favor is 1) This seems like an AMAZING "couples" game. Very simple to follow, and a "run" with a teenager can take just about an hour so you can play one journey each evening for a week. 2) This is absolutely a game I'm going to seek out multiple playthroughs of on YouTube since the game loves player freedom and choice. It's also randomly generated in a rogue-like sense so while you may have met a certain character on one playthrough, it may not be the case for another. If it sounds like your cup of tea, check it out since it really is such a lovely, novel concept. I now need to word-vomit my entire personal journey so that my playthrough can be documented for eternity and I can revisit it whenever I please. SPOILERS BELOW These were my stats at the end of my 1st playthrough. As you can see, I only reached 100% completion for one character which means that I left quite a bit on my plate in terms of unplayed encounters. I did this intentionally. A Wonderful Structure - I really cannot get over how spectacular the pacing/structure is in Road 96. I can talk more in-depth now that I can mention spoilers. Basically, as a teen, you have to take care of yourself in your quest to flee the country. This involves making sure you have money on you by scavenging environments, stealing, or helping people out if the need arises. While planning out your "route", you need to make sure you have enough energy. Walking consumes more energy than driving. But you can't drive if you don't have car keys. It's tough to find car keys in hotels/abandoned stations unless you know how to lockpick. You could take the bus or phone a taxi, but you need money for that. This incentivizes the player to explore different locations. Typically, once there, you'll interact with one of the seven characters as you journey. Each of these encounters is unique. They typically last 10-15 minutes. I was involved in some that kept me completely enraptured and I couldn't freaking wait to see what the game would throw next at me. Other times, even if a bit dull, the game never truly lost my attention since I knew I was moments away from a new scenario that may draw me back in again. The fact that journeying with a teenager takes just around an hour also makes it brilliant for easy and obvious "stop here" points in case your gaming play time is limited. But enough about the mechanics. Let's get to the real reason the game was such a hit, the characters! Ranked, because of course they are. #1. Jarod - Jarod is best boy. Is he probably one of the most terrifying characters I've faced in my entire history of gaming? Absolutely. But holy crap when he is on screen I can't help but be utterly mesmerized. Basically... Jarod speaks in a dark, gruff tone (and boy is his voice actor hamming it up) and is a taxi driver in the county of Petria. Unfortunately, Jarod, just like all sad boys, has a tragic backstory. He lost his daughter back in 1986 due to the Black Brigades attack. Due to her death, he has allowed it to consume him to the point of vengeance. He wants all Black Brigades to die. He also wants a famous reporter, Sonya Sanchez, who was on the scene when Lola (his daughter) died. Due to the first-person perspective, Jarod's antics are particularly unnerving. He will point a gun in your face and threaten to kill you if you don't do what he asks. I always followed orders. In one scene, as a different teenager, I was journeying with him in the taxi. I decided to prompt some casual small talk... all of a sudden... I heard thumping from the trunk of the taxi. A meter all of a sudden appeared called: "Jarod's cold anger". Whatever you do, for the love of all that is holy, DO NOT RAISE THAT METER. I fled the scene when the man in the trunk poked his head through and ended up getting murdered by Jarod. On other occasions, you'll pick him up after stealing a car and he'll assert his control over the situation to carry out what he has in mind. The resolution to his story was a bit... off. Of course, I didn't see all of it, but when he finally confronts Sonya on the day I reached Road 96 as the 5th teen it appears Sonya... for the first time in her life... shows remorse? So he decides not to kill her? It honestly was a bit stilted and not great but it doesn't change the fact whenever I knew Jarod was involved, the game had me undivided full attention. #2. Zoe - Zoe is who I imagine the developers over at DigxArt wanted to be our favorite character. For whatever reason, she seems like she was plucked straight out of the Life is Strange universe and dropped into Road 96. The reason why I said she's the developer's favorite is that unlike all the other characters in the game, Zoe's story is structured. You are guaranteed to meet her at least once on each journey with each teen. First, in a trailer park where she'll meet up with you and ask you to play her trombone (not like that you sicko). It's quite humorous. On another run, you'll be with her in a couple's van after hitchiking. You'll play her in Connect Four and get your ASS HANDED TO YOU cause gawd damn is she Rajon Rondo I got swept 0-3 by her. You'll end up getting arrested by cops because she has a big mouth and doesn't know when to shut up. (She would make Chloe so proud). As another teen, you'll be asked to facilitate her escape from the police (you can offer to help or not). Finally, when you've made it to Road 96, you'll have to decide whether or not you want to sacrifice yourself for her in order to escape. She contains some pretty important information (she's the daughter of one the corrupt President Tyrak's cronies and revealing this info could shed some light on the regime). Honestly, I always enjoyed the conversations with her and I understand why the developers made her the game's "star" so to speak given her circumstances so similar to yours. #3. John - John's a cool trucker dude who will often give you a lift if you frequently choose your method of transportation to be hitchiking. I remember my first time in his van being jarred by the fact he was missing two fingers and despite his overt friendliness, how casual the game let me rob him blind of his money and food. I took the remaining portion of his hamburger but left the money since sheesh, that could have been cruel. John's scenarios are chill yet gradually escalate. His truck will be threatened to be robbed by street pirates and you'll need to fend them off with a nail gun. Eventually, you'll discover that he's a Black Brigade and has some serious ties to the incident that occurred in 1986. You enter your relationship with him as he endures a falling out with the head of the rebel sect. You'll be able to meet up with them after you whoop his ass in ice hockey and he offers you a drink to settle the score. I was also in his truck when he engaged in some... "CB"...? With a random lady over the phone? Mama Bear and Papa Bear? Uhh... what? You have to play it to get it. He's also kind of a pivotal character at the end of the game due to his relationship with Alex (worst boy) about arming/disarming a bomb but uhh... that had me slightly more disengaged compared to the other events involving him. All in all, big J's alright. #4. Stan & Mitch - A motorcycle band of brothers who commit crimes. They're basically Beavis & Butthead and do everything their power to rebel against the system. My introduction to them was when they picked me up while hitchiking and asked me to weave in and out of traffic to track down a dude who they're convinced is going to kill their beloved celebrity, Sonya. (ayyyy see how some characters end up interacting with others?). This will be a theme throughout your time whenever you meet with these two. They're going to commit crimes in order to collect money but also want to protect Sonya, their beloved, for they fear someone is out to hurt her. They honestly have some of the coolest scenarios in the entire game despite their evident stupidity. You'll help them stage a break-in of an abandoned joint and feed them info, fend off security, and decide whether or not to sell them out when the police come knocking. On another run, you'll be on the opposite end of things, in an innocent restaurant when they come and rob the place and they'll task you with collecting everyone's money in an intense scenario with a timer and everything. While they were typically cooler with teenagers, they did rob me of $157 during one of my playthroughs and the only way I earned it back was by helping them correctly identify when Jarod would attack Sonya due to a collection of evidence they had gathered. The silly thing is... towards the end of their story, you discover they're Sonya's big brothers which is... stupidly goofy. #5. Sonya - Sonya is hard to love, man. Basically.... she's Tomi Lahren. OR Candace Owens. OR Laura Ingraham. She is a 100% hard grifter for the right-wing government led by President Tyrak and presents all of her many news reports in the most slanted way possible asking all to vote for Tyrak this upcoming election since democracy is at stake. The game wants you to hate her. But also offers these scenarios where you'll interact with her and she treats the teenager in an odd... way? Basically, the only reason the game actually lets you interact with her is because the game wants her to be a character you interact with. In no actual scenario would she give you the time of day. She treats her bodyguard, Adam, like trash. There's a scenario where you can legit let this dude DIE if you don't give up a camera you used to record him going undercover and she gets mad at you for botching her news story. She'll take you to one of Tyrak's fundraiser campaigns and while she'll let you rack up some money by betting on you over and over again at carnival events, you'll have to suffer at the mercy of her rhetoric. Basically, this lady sucks 95% of the time, yet when her life is at stake and she's about to be murdered by Jarod (which she didn't know).... she now shows remorse for the incident in '86? It's insanely dumb and I wish they would have at least made her slightly more human? OR at least torn for being a mouthpiece for such a horrendous regime? #6. Fanny - Fanny is the character I interacted the least with. She's... fine. She's a cop. So she sucks. (jk) Fanny was actually the very first character I met when playing Road 96. Her car had broken down. She needed assistance. I helped her. She opened up about having a son that had run away from home and how she worries for other teenagers who have fled and left their parents worried sick. As she's a cop, she's kind of dismissive of a lot of the awful things said about the government and what they "really" do to teenagers who flee (sending them to the pits) and so forth. There's a scenario where you're with her on a bus and can make the tension of the situation rise either by attacking her verbally or defending her yet incur the scorn of surrounding passengers. You'll also be asked to weave in and out of traffic to go after some Black Brigade members in another scene. She's fine, honestly. Just not all that compelling either. A proper 6/10. her big revelations are that... SURPRISE! She's Mama Bear! She was flirting with John over the phone! What a surprise! Oh, and whaddya know, her son who ran away from home is Alex! Yay! #7. Alex - Alex sucks. Alex is a little twerp "genius" kid who is a "hacker" who is being employed by this rebel sect for nefarious means. He fled home because he wants to know more about his biological parents. His adoptive step-mom Fanny did not give him the information he wanted. Alex's general demeanor is just kinda... amateur hour for me. Oh, he's so smart. Oh, he's real torn since he's the youngest character you interact with on a daily basis yet you're supposed to take him seriously. You'll end up trolling some cops by electrocuting them from a rig he set up as well as aid with an illegal radio transmitter but he's far and away the most forgettable character in the game for me. Still, by and large, this cast is pretty stacked even while excluding him. The Politics Behind the Game - This thread has been around since 2016 and after 560 replies, I guess it's finally time for me to get political. The game is... incredibly surface-level when it comes to its commentary on politics. Don't go into this expecting you to be challenged or experience anything profoundly thought-provoking. You have your "we need to get out there and vote!" crowd and NPCs you'll come across that encourage the youth to take the bull by the horns and make their voice heard. Those people will be met with the: "voting doesn't solve anything, we need ACTION!" which means physically protesting which you can further push the needle on and encourage full-on rebellion and violence if enough action isn't being done. Finally, you can opt for the delightfully centrist and defeatist "everything sucks, nothing's ever going to change" attitude where all you do is look out for yourself and mock either side for trying to do anything. The ending of the game can be altered by the way you generally steer (rebellion, voting, full-on apathy) and uhh... yea man. That's all I've got. I guess I'll leave it here. Road 96's Shortcomings - For as much as I enjoyed my time with Road 96, there are many things that I think could detract from the experience which I feel the need to mention candidly here and now. 1) As mentioned earlier, some of the dialogue is incredibly hit-or-miss. The voice actors are throwing 102MPH and sometimes when you're hamming up the accents that hard (such as in Sonya's case), you can't help but cringe a bit. I get that it's a style the game is going for, and while it largely didn't affect my experience, some may have a far smaller tolerance for it than I do. Basically, do you enjoy anime? If you do, you can stomach it. If you're someone who whenever Life is Strange is mentioned types in Twitch chat: "Life is Cringe", the game may not be for you. 2) I have serious doubts as to how much player choice is actually respected. Admittedly, I need to test this. As I wanted to experience the game organically, I did not push the mechanics of the game against itself to see if it would actually stand up to its own pressure. I played it seriously, like I was the actual teenager, and thus always leaned towards "SURVIVE" when it meant not testing Jarod or selling out Stan/Mitch before security got me. But... can you actually die before reaching Road 96? I never failed to. I'm curious just how far the game will go to punishing the player. 3) The amount of characters related to other characters is idiotic. Why did they do this? Why do Stan/Mitch/Sonya all have to be related? Why the connection between John/Fanny/Alex? It accomplished nothing other than to make me say: "Oh.... that's dumb." I was fully expecting a surprise reveal of the end for Jarod to actually be Zoe's REAL father to complete the triple whammy. 4) The ending fizzled out. I admit that this may vary from playthrough to playthrough. But I know mine's ended with my 6th teen being arrested, taken to the pits, until all of a sudden I escape and find John who finds Alex who confronts Fanny and the 3 of them have a kumbayah moment right before we fight for our freedom against Petria's security. In my YouTube exploration post-review, I'll see if there's a far more satisfactory down a different path. Would I recommend Road 96? Absolutely! This was a diamond in the rough I'm incredibly glad I took a chance on. I also feel like there's enough player interaction that even a game enjoyer who prefers "gameplay-focused" games could find some enjoyment in it. It's honestly like a mix of Life Is Strange + The Walking Dead Telltale Series + Paradise Killer. As I've gone through this entire review without mentioning the trophy side of things, I'll mention it here. It's unbelievably straightforward. I did not even look at a trophy guide and due to the generous manner in which the game offers its cassette collectibles, you'll be able to enjoy your initial playthrough without sweating over having to glance at a guide every now and then. I completed the game in 6 hours and earned the 56.72% rarity platinum in 1 day and 1 hour. Road 96 has put the French developer, DigixArt on the map for me and I will gladly check out anything they create moving forward. Until next time! Panda Score: 7.8 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.2 / 10 Spoiler Playing this cuz some dude said it was fun, I’ll be the judge of that Family, organized, not do anything, watch movies to experience… have a layugh What the hell I this introduction lmao feels anime as hell Okay we’re helping out Fanny the cop and her broken down car.. Ok so Fanny had an adoptive son of the Black Brigades.. I decided to choose to hitch hike over the $7 bus or walking along the road… OKAY SO STAN & MITCH ARE PRETTY COOL!… I think I survived the swerving traffic? This is giving me big Paradise Killer vibes 16% with Fanny, 18% with Stan/Mitch… not bad I’d say! Just played the trombone with Zoe… nice Met up with John via hitchhiking and stole some food but not any money… Now we’re with Alex and hacked in… beat him at Pwong. Got caught by the owner and bailed Oh damn… I think we managed to escape as our 1st teen! Pretty sick! Via abandon tunnels Helped out Sonya start of episode #2 and she gave us gas money at the end… pretty cool! Damn Zoe kicked my ass at connect 4 in 2 games Bruh I really thought Jarrod was about to kill our ass, Lola? Ayyyyyy we escaped as the 2nd teen via the mountain with only one energy left! We just helped John as he was bouta get robbed… and mama/papa bear…. Ay, discovered that Alex is Fanny’s adoptive son… Welp we got caught as the 3rd teen and arrested cuz we couldn’t hold our breathe long enough Swept John 3-0 in air hockey and won $15! Woo! I voted for non-violence on the Brigades…… sorry Robert Okay that “Don’t increase Jarod’s cold anger” meter was legit terrifying I discovered the day the killer will attack! September 9th! We did it! Got our $157 back! We sacrificed ourselves to save Zoe as the 4th teen… Convinced Alex not to build the bomb for The Brigades… Looool…. 5th teen to Road 96 and we discover Stan/Mitch are Sonya’s big brothers 5th teen we escaped on a work VISA lol LOOOOOL… end of 6th teen and Mama/Papa Bear is revealed as Fanny/John confront each other Edited December 7, 2022 by realm722 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darling Baphomet Posted December 7, 2022 Share Posted December 7, 2022 Huh, I'd seen that game on sale a few times but I think I kept associating it with the one or two other indie roadtrip games I see that are decidedly mediocre. I'll definitely have to give it a look in the future! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breakingthegreen Posted December 7, 2022 Share Posted December 7, 2022 35 minutes ago, Darling Baphomet said: Huh, I'd seen that game on sale a few times but I think I kept associating it with the one or two other indie roadtrip games I see that are decidedly mediocre. I'll definitely have to give it a look in the future! Me when I there's a person who hasn't played Road 96 yet: 1 hour ago, realm722 said: Why Road 96? A lot of times I don't have a very interesting for how I discovered a game. Either I found it on sale and thought it looked decent so I took a flyer on it or I've been coveting a game for a while due to seeing a trailer that intrigued me. Road 96 is incredibly different. I had never heard of this game in my life. Yet, one day, while reading one of @Charizarzar's wonderful Member Interviews (in this case @breakingthegreen) they mentioned it amongst their Top 5 games. I had heard of Super Mario Galaxy, Heavy Rain, Legend of Zelda: Breathe of the Wild, & Life is Strange but to find a game I'd never heard of that was available on modern hardware... I immediately added it to my wishlist! Let the fairly cupcake platinum rarity be damnded. If it ended up being a total trainwreck, I'd be able to make a verbose rant about being buyer beware of taking random recommendations in the future. Instead, I think I can add myself to the list of unpaid spokesman who are gonna advertise this game at every possible turn given how remarkably unique it is. Yay, I've influenced someone. Happy to not have wasted your time 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darling Baphomet Posted December 7, 2022 Share Posted December 7, 2022 32 minutes ago, breakingthegreen said: Me when I there's a person who hasn't played Road 96 yet: Did you mean to embed something? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breakingthegreen Posted December 7, 2022 Share Posted December 7, 2022 (edited) Bugger, yes I did. I had tried to make the gif of "best boy" Jarod pointing a gun, hopefully it worked this time. 19 hours ago, Darling Baphomet said: Did you mean to embed something? (edit) It did not work, pretend I was being jokingly threatening over something that doesn't matter... Edited December 8, 2022 by breakingthegreen 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted December 9, 2022 Author Share Posted December 9, 2022 I Recap The 2022 Game Awards So You Don't Have To Bonjour everyone. Last night (December 8th, 2022) (Thursday) was The Game Awards 2022. An event unlike any other where hundreds of thousands of gamers huddle into their favorite Twitch streamer's channel and snarkily critique every cringe moment on stage down to the most minute detail. Everybody screams "SILKSONG" at every World Premiere and ResidentSleeper's every time a premiere plays for a game they may not have any interest in. I personally enjoyed the showing as I do every year with my favorite Canadian father of four, Joseph Anderson. It was fun as always. Still, I noticed I always have difficulty remembering how "good" a Game Awards show is given everything tends to blend together once time passes. I've decided to combat this effect by cataloging every notable moment in this post. I've done it in the past for E3 2021 and Summer Games Fest 2022. LINK TO THE FULL STREAM SO YOU CAN JUMP TO EXACT MINUTE WITH EASE (26:15) That's such a.... bold decision for a dress as the main presenter for the pre-show. (35:44) Wait... Sifu is a fighting game? No it isn't? (37:12) WORLD PREMIERE - Hellboy Web of Wyrd. Not interested. Kinda looks like an indie project for a big IP. Maybe it's fine. Never cared for Hellboy media. (40:39) WORLD PREMIERE - Horizon VR Call of the Mountain. Not interested. Don't own VR. Prolly never will. Hope it's good tho, just to help the medium keep progressing. (41:15) WORLD PREMIERE - Post Trauma. Not interested. Too spooky for my taste. The protagonist reminds me of the guy from Whale Wars. (42:17) WORLD PREMIERE - Viewfinder. Has my curiosity. That looks neat as hell but I wonder if its extremely gimmicky and just a brisk 2-3 game at most. (43:38) - Atomic Heart. Man... while that game looks weird as hell, my gut tells me its gonna be a janky disaster that gets torn apart. Maybe I'm wrong. (44:38) - Scars Above. I swore that was just Returnal DLC. Not really my lane of interest but I guess it could be okay. (48:43) - WORLD PREMIERE - After Us. Not interested. The game is not for me. The environments look gorgeous. The protagonist model looks... rough. (58:07) - WOOOOOOO GEOFF! WE LOVE GEOFF! (1:01:06) - That's crazy they got Al Pacino for this. Like... of all actors. Glad to see he's doing alright for 82 years of age. (1:04:20) - AWARD - Man... Judge was phenomenal as Kratos but I feel like the range from Manon Gage for Immortality should have won it. She's phenomenal. (1:13:25) - lmao Geoff nicely done (1:13:57) WORLD PREMIERE - Hades II. LET'S FREAKING GOOOOOO!!!! I will play literally anything Supergiant Games makes. Best announcement of the night. (1:16:58) WORLD PREMIERE - Judas. Ehh... never cared for the Bioshock series. Hope it's good for those who love that sorta thing though. (1:19:10) WORLD PREMIERE - Bayonetta Origins. lmao. I can't imagine how upset some fans must be for the genre switch-up. (1:26:20) Hozier is decent I guess. I'm just not really the target audience for musical performances during these sorta award shows. (1:31:46) AWARD - Never heard of Norco. Feels kinda whack that Stray won. Think Vampire Survivors or especially Neon White deserved it. (1:35:46) Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. The more I see of the game... I have my doubts. Rocksteady did incredible work but I dunno man, just bene too long. (1:46:45) Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Should I play the original? I can play it for $5 via EA Play. I've heard it's like... baby's Dark Souls. Maybe the sequel is an even bigger hit. (1:50:45) WORLD PREMIERE - Earthblade. Mmm... Celeste won the hearts of many (I enjoyed it, didn't love it). Curious if this does too. I'll probably play it. (1:52:40) WORLD PREMIERE - Dune Awakening. AN MMO??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? There's no way that gets canned within one year of its release window. (1:59:25) WORLD PREMIERE - Death Stranding 2. I still haven't played the original. I still appreciate Kojima. I hope it's awesome for those who love it! (2:08:30) AWARD - Elden Ring has no business being nominated. The category in general is shockingly weak. Games need better stories. (2:21:30) AWARD - Happy to see this category was given some spotlight. Haven't heard of any of them aside from As Dusk Falls but I'd like to check some of them out. (2:24:47) WORLD PREMIERE - Baldur's Gate III. Ayy look it's a game trying to impersonate Divinity Original Sin II's success! (This is a joke) (2:32:05) Sky: Children of Light. This game just came to PS4/5 Users this past week. I def wanna check it out. It's an incredibly novel concept. (2:37:07) WORLD PREMIERE - Diablo IV. Not interested. Not for me. Anyone who still trusts Blizzard at this point has Stockholm syndrome. (2:42:06) WORLD PREMIERE - Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. Hell yea, I'll happily go back and play more as Aloy with some fresh DLC. (trophies too pls) (2:44:50) AWARD - Not My Game Award. Neon White or Sifu deserved it. HELL, WHERE THE HELL IS MY ROLLERDROME??? (2:48:37) WORLD PREMIERE - Blue Protocol. Looks anime as hell. Looks gorgeous as hell. If it gets rave reviews, I may check it out. (2:58:07) I think the Super Mario movie is going to be fun and the biggest thing people are gonna lambast is Chris Pratt is Mario. Poor guy. (3:04:09) WORLD PREMIERE - Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Holy crap the folks who made LiS made a game that gorgeous? I have SERIOUS doubts about the action being good. (3:12:50) - When the comedy is so cringe it actually circles back over itself and becomes hilarious. (3:15:07) - Whenever I see these ladies all I can think of is when they spit all over an obnoxious Twitch chatter during one of their streams (3:21:00) WORLD PREMIERE - Crime Boss: Rockay City. I can literally see into the future and see Dunkey's 3 million+ view video on this game clowning it for all its glitches. (3:28:20) AWARD - I, just as everyone, love Reggie. There's just something awesome about him man. Good on Elden Ring for winning. (3:31:30) WORLD PREMIERE - Cybperunk2077: Phantom Liberty. I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY GOT IDRIS ELBA FOR SOME BLOODY DLC. I'll watch that. (3:33:40) WORLD PREMIERE - Armored Core VI. Are these games actually any good? Will this be most people's first AC game just cuz FromSoftware is a big boi developer now? (3:40:45) Final Fantasy XVI. Of all hyped games, I think FF16 is legit going to be the one that puts the franchise "back on the map". Looks absolutely sensational. (3:44:40) GOTY AWARD - lmao, classic Josef. Love the musical presentation they do honoring all the nominees. Elden Ring deserved it due to cultural significance. Well done. (3:53:00) The most talked about moment of the night. Orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton shoutout. Good thing it was just a trolly kid and not someone who wanted to hurt Miyazaki. So there you have it! Overall I would rate the awards a solid 7.5/10 in terms of enjoyment and I bet the 10th Year Anniversary in 2023 will be even more ridiculous. Cheers Geoff! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted December 13, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 13, 2022 Graphics Aren't Everything, Until They Are You cannot throw a pebble-sized rock in the toxic wasteland that is video game discourse online without eventually encountering some dialogue or another covering video game graphics. There are two sides to this coin. The side that "does not care about graphics at all". They will typically cite a game such as Call of Duty as an example of a game with excellent graphics that is downright terrible. They will cite some indie game (Minecraft) that is generally disregarded for its aesthetics as being excellent or vastly prefer stylized graphics (and probably mention The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker) as an example of a game that has aged magnificently for choosing style over an obsession to replicate reality. This is, of course, one side of the coin. While I've poked some minor fun at it, I understand where this person is coming from. They believe they value substance over style. There's more to games than to merely ooh and ahh at them. They justify this with a handful of examples. This is all well and good. But what if I told you that you got what you really wanted? I recently read this provocatively titled article from TheGamer which suggests that games are too expensive to be this disappointing. It goes on to mention that for every smash hit (The Last of Us Part 2, Elden Ring) there will be numerous $70 games that took years to create that simply don't live up to the hype. The article lists a few examples, but you can already conjure up a few names in your head. Some viewed Horizon Forbidden West as a "tired, safe, typical formulaic open-world game" and while I disagree strongly with some of those accusations, the game made very little headway in the gaming zeitgeist. Hell, I believe God of War: Ragnarok has fallen victim to some of those same claims. Most egregiously made obvious by the backlash of Souls fans who found the game to play it very safe in the Sony model and while it hit all the right notes for some, I don't think I'd be out of line to say that there is starting to be more and more pushback against the "classic AAA third-person prestige video game" formula that was ground-breaking a decade ago but is slowly gnawing away at the souls of gaming conglomerates who remember a different time. When games "weren't bloated by 20-40 hours of repeated content". When games "didn't have a needless and empty open world". When games weren't fattened with "the same old nonsense fetch quests". They miss the days when Rockstar Games didn't sit upon their Scrooge McDuck gold mountain that is Grand Theft Auto V and actually released different tiles year in and year out. Why can't we go back to the good old days of video games? I think I have the answer. It's because gamers freaking suck. and because gamers suck, the uptight spreadsheet poindexter's who focus test and trial group their game down to every nook-and-cranny would need to undergo a lobotomy to change their way of thinking. Let me stop being so obtuse. I don't think gamers would actually enjoy the changes they shriek and cry for. They're asking for a time that has long since passed us, and going back to that past would be the equivalent of asking people to give up their cellphone. Sure, I'm absolutely certain I can find SOME freaks who would not have their entire livelihoods and social lives upended by such a drastic change, but most people wouldn't be very happy about it. I have a few justifications for this theory. 1) Have you SEEN the way gamers react to a poorly textured model in a $70 AAA game? I can go get the examples. Just google "FF7 Remake door texture" and you will get multiple google page worth of results detailing the original issue and how Square Enix has fixed it since in the Integrade edition. You can take a look at the recent lambasting of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet being torn to shreds for looking like a PS1 game. For the record, PS1 games were freaking awesome. If players REALLY want to go back to the olden days, we've gotta take the good with the bad! My point is this. People say they don't want video game developers to crunch. People say that don't NEED video game graphics to take a billion dog years to create and would be happy with current graphics if it helped make games faster and shortened game cycles. But do you actually think that would fly? If Insomniac Games Marvel's Spider-Man 2 looked exactly like the original but took less time to create do you think people would be satiated? Maybe some would. But I also know there'd be some tweet about how some texture of a building looks like a horizontal improvement at best over the former and that'd be the gaming crisis for the week. REMEMBER THE PUDDLES???? 2) Gamers say they want games with less bloated content. But do they actually though? While this may not have to do with graphics, this criticism is burgeoning more and more as gamers get bigger and bigger. It has been the hallmark criticism of the latest Assassin's Creed releases. Any "open-world game" will inevitably get lambasted as an Ubisoft clone and anything used to unlock more of the map will be dismissed as: "lul reskinned tower". If players complain so damn much about these painstaking, costly, expensive features... why do developers continue to implement them? I have to imagine because they know that if they didn't their game would be torn to shreds for being paper-thin. Believe it or not, I remember back when there was pushback for gamers being "on the rails" with zero hub zones or crafting. You'd have your gameplay hallway through the story and that'd be it. 15-20 hours and you're out. Would players be willing to readjust their perspective of a $70 game acknowledging the shorter runtime? I don't think so, and even if they did, the amount of games that would succumb to this criticism would scare other studios from ever venturing into these waters. 3) Once we've come this far, there's simply no way to go back. Let's imagine a scenario. Sony announces an all-new State of Play that hypes up that the showcase will be announcing Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio's next biggest projects. Can you imagine the hype that would create? You huddle over your laptop and can't wait to see what your favorite studio has in store for you to look forward 6 years from now. All of a sudden, the logo appears! Naughty Dog will be returning to their roots and releasing Jak & Daxter 4! Meanwhile, Santa Monica Studio will be debuting a new IP in a 2D platformer. Listen, I'm sure some folks would be excited about it. But for as strong as some nostalgia may be, I don't think people want these titans of the gaming industry to actually be all that experimental. Most of the fanbases they've garnered have come from a specific template. When you play games from these studios, you WANT the cutting edge, jaw-dropping realistic graphics that make your mouth water. Anything less and all of a sudden.... nobody is making those games anymore. In conclusion, I don't think people want what they're actually asking for. For as much as I'd love to return to the experimental PS2 days where there were hundreds of studios being ambitious and trying out wildly different and varying genres, I don't think a sudden change of heart from across the gaming landscape would actually get us what we want. That time has passed, and it's not coming back again. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Copanele Posted December 13, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted December 13, 2022 (edited) Disclaimer before I reply: My train of thought might have flaws, because I am going to go particular on some subjects. I'll try to be as clear as possible, but please point them out Oh man...you have no idea how many times I read that last post, to the point where I was The Dude from The Big Lebowski. Not going to lie, you really posted one biiig controversial thing here I mean, there are some good points there but unfortunately I believe that this is too nuanced of a topic to be generalized. But overall, I would like to counter with the idea that "if graphics is all there is to a game, then there's not much fun to be had ". Now, to not get me completely wrong, GRAPHICS ARE MAD IMPORTANT. Looks matter. Or rather, how you present your product matters immensely. If you present me a game that looks like poop, chances are I won't like it and probably avoid it. However, GRAPHICS by themselves don't matter at all if the rest of the game is garbage or uninteresting or has nothing else going for it. Let's poop on Ubisoft a bit, shall we? Assassin's Creed Valhalla looks gorgeous, you can play with that damn photo mode for ages. But it's the only thing it has good (well that and soundtrack). Far Cry 6? Magnifico, you even have Giancarlo Esposido and the best rendered dog called chorizo. Game's boring as hell, it's the same shit they ever did since Far Cry 3, only in Cuba or ..wherever that action happens. On the other hand, let's take another Ubisoft game - Assassin's Creed Origins. Graphics were phenomenal. It's made by Ubisoft who we established that they do recycled stuff. So why did that game work? Because it also had the gameplay, a good story and most importantly the atmosphere. The game made you feel like you truly are in Ancient Egypt, even if you have no goddamn clue how Egypt actually is. It managed to hit that "gamerzzz core" that is so hard to touch. That's why AC Origins is considered one of the best AC games out there (just so I won't mention AC2 again). The reason why I think (aka not confirmed by any sources) this topic "Graphics aren't everything, until they are" keeps appearing, is because of the reason why all the controversial game related topics appear - dumb people having Twitter and toxic content creators having youtube channels to a fault, it's this part: 6 hours ago, realm722 said: It's because gamers freaking suck. and because gamers suck, the uptight spreadsheet poindexter's who focus test and trial group their game down to every nook-and-cranny would need to undergo a lobotomy to change their way of thinking. Let me stop being so obtuse. I don't think gamers would actually enjoy the changes they shriek and cry for. It's just a very VERY VERY VERY VERY vocal minority that actually sucks ass. The ones who harass voice actors for decisions companies make outside of their scope. The ones who have their opponents swatted in Call of Duty. The youtubers who have 95% toxic content that just spit "gaming sucks" and simply can't find some joy in their lives, like they've lost the whole purpose of "gaming". That's a topic for another day tho In truth, people don't always know how to formulate their requests either. - I WANT BETTER GAMES!! - Uh ok, what would you like to be changed in your games? - Uh...uh....BETTER GAMES Quote They're asking for a time that has long since passed us What they probably are asking is for that "wow" feeling they had when they played games in their childhood. Very difficult to replicate, I know, since growing up can be a bitch but there's games that managed to do that perfectly, such as Hades and...Elden Ring. However I will also 100% agree with this statement Quote If players REALLY want to go back to the olden days, we've gotta take the good with the bad! Oh yeah, I personally vote for this too! You want the glory days of Metal Gear Solid 2 ? Well prepare to embrace Bubsy 3D as well. And again, about the Graphics part - nasty tweets attract loads of attention. Bless "Gaming Journalism Sites" for propagating some stupid quote that a colorblind dude said. Now for the real thing, where I think I disagree the most, but I might be equally wrong: 6 hours ago, realm722 said: 2) Gamers say they want games with less bloated content. But do they actually though? Yes YES YES Now, putting the trophy hunting community aside, picking up the main majority, I asked around...50-60 colleagues/friends/annoying little cousins what they think about Assassin's Creed Odyssey, a game that I enjoyed. After deciphering the gibberish, they all said "Man, it's a fantastic game, but it's too big so I got bored and dropped it and sold it and bought FIFA instead". As a matter of fact I am the only one who finished the damn thing among my friends and only because of the trophies, because believe me by the time I reached Sparta I too wanted to delete the stupid game because it was too bloated. Now in truth, I do understand the developers' side, where they fear that they will get reviews like "I paid $70 and I got only THIS?" so that's why they shove this much unnecessary content, to give a sense of "here's what you paid for". However, here comes Elden Ring who does basically the same shit but in such a way that you feel satisfaction when you find stuff. Believe me, Elden Ring is just as bloated (if you are a melee only player then half the stuff you collect is just useless shit) , but they managed to do the entire magic in such a way that your goblin brain WANTS to go in that weird corner of the map even though there's 99.9% chances that you will find ANOTHER red herb and a runebear to munch on your ass. Quote . Would players be willing to readjust their perspective of a $70 game acknowledging the shorter runtime? I think for this specific example the issue was that RE3 cut down on the material of the original RE3. However I never played Resident Evil so I might be wrong. But overall, the Ubisoft formula has been done so many times that it's a gag reflex every time you see it, despite the game being actually good (I still believe Horizon games are VERY good even if they have the same Tower thing). Blame Ubisoft for this 6 hours ago, realm722 said: 3) Once we've come this far, there's simply no way to go back. Let's imagine a scenario. Sony announces an all-new State of Play that hypes up that the showcase will be announcing Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio's next biggest projects. Can you imagine the hype that would create? You huddle over your laptop and can't wait to see what your favorite studio has in store for you to look forward 6 years from now. All of a sudden, the logo appears! Naughty Dog will be returning to their roots and releasing Jak & Daxter 4! Meanwhile, Santa Monica Studio will be debuting a new IP in a 2D platformer. Listen, I'm sure some folks would be excited about it. But for as strong as some nostalgia may be, I don't think people want these titans of the gaming industry to actually be all that experimental. Most of the fanbases they've garnered have come from a specific template. When you play games from these studios, you WANT the cutting edge, jaw-dropping realistic graphics that make your mouth water. Anything less and all of a sudden.... nobody is making those games anymore. Yeah ok, with this I can agree. Since gaming is a humongous industry, going "back to the roots" simply won't cut it. It would be panned as lazy and uninspired. You would have to innovate big time, the way Capcom does with Street Fighter 6. And especially coming from the titans of the industry, who have to please shareholders and all that. However....they "could" do a Lambda team to create a 2D God of War Ragnarok spinoff with Thrud where she goes in adventures and does flippy dippy shit and just smashes Draugr and be an unexpected hit because of its artstyle and gameplay. They could be that creative too, you know, we're playing games after all it doesn't all have to be business and shit 100% of the time. Besides, Ubisoft constantly does it too, with stuff like Child of Light and Immortal Fenyx Rising (so it won't be said that I only crap on them) I think overall, the gaming world is way more diverse to be defined by a few angry tweets written by angry dudes who don't even know how to open a door properly. Or gaming journos who get hired just because they wrote a CV better than the others but they can't jump over boxes in Cuphead. What I think is...maybe we're asking the wrong question. Maybe what we should ask is for more...heart in our games? I don't know, better writing across the board? Less drama perhaps (ok that's a selfish request, you can't have Internet and drama-free world ?)? Finished products who aren't released ahead of time just because investors say so? I don't know man, it's mad complex. I think the good-to-bad game ratio has improved towards the good side, it's just that we aren't kids anymore, to say "ha ha Tifa's butt glitched again". Of course, the industry is not helping it either (Blizzard constantly fucking up games and lives), so maybe that's why we're all abit bitter nowadays. Oh also, I also can't formulate ideas to save my life, so I am equally faulty of many of the things mentioned about gamerz In the end, this was still a great read, you really gave me a lot to think here mr Realm722. Well done! Edited December 13, 2022 by Copanele 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted December 14, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 14, 2022 Game: Donut County Analysis: I bought Donut County for $3.89 back in early September 2022 and talk about an absolutely delightful brisk adventure! Why Donut County? In past years (essentially anything pre-2022), I would likely have never played a game like DC. I don't have any good reason for this. Prior to this year, I tried to avoid games with platinums over 50% rarity. I did not want to attain platinums in a "cheap" manner and generally steered clear of games that could even offer that perception. But as my monthly gaming madness methodology became more and more concrete, I found myself able to justify a "quickie" at the start of each month to get the ball rolling. I wouldn't be out here playing My Name Is Mayo, but experimenting with some unique and novel titles that were 2-3 hours in length would be right down my alley without compromising my gaming catalog's integrity. I've already seen huge successes in the form of A Short Hike & Unpacking and I'm happy to announce that Donut County continues the trend of being endearing in its playfulness! Katamari Damacy Walked So Donut County Could Crawl - That statement sounds like a diss towards Donut County but it's really not. I enjoyed my time with the game! I don't think it's better than Katamari by any means, but I love how obviously it was inspired to make something pretty cool on a smaller indie scale. Essentially, the gameplay of DC is you'll play as a hole and be asked to suck up all the items in a level. You'll start out tiny. Only being able to scoop up small items such as bricks or water bottles. As you consume more items, your hole gets bigger(hold the laugh). You can now scoop up even larger objects. Before you know it, you'll have gone from small potatoes to engulfing an entire highway jam's worth of cars as well as a building with living creatures inside of it. It's extremely simple and straightforward and quite cathartic to mellow out to given how straightforward it all is. The gameplay will introduce some light puzzle mechanics such as a catapult that can launch items which you'll need to progress in some areas but by and large none of these should cause even the slightest of headaches and with enough experimentation, you'll figure out what the game is asking for you within a matter of moments. A Surprisingly Great Ending - (SPOILERS FOR DONUT COUNTY'S STORY) Of all the things I expected to enjoy from the game, Donut County's story finale was not one of them. I whisked past most of the dialogue exchanges during the game between levels with my general mood being descriable as "mildly amused". I thought the game was cute and goofy, and while nothing too revelatory, I could enjoy the light-hearted absurdity of a raccoon named BK causing chaos for an entire city and accidentally sending a bunch of townsfolk to the underground while he's chided by his human friend Mira. But the ending... damn! Trash King is a hella memorable final boss. The fact that his tempting BK to accept a lucrative position including healthcare coverage and a premium Quadcopter actually had me intrigued towards the end surprised me! The pickle jar joke was also golden. I'm not someone who cares much for stories in games and the fact that DC's actually stuck with me during the home stretch of infiltrating Trash King's headquarters is a huge credit to Ben Esposito and the team that created it! My Donut County Puzzle Epiphany - Every now and then, I'll have a game that sticks out in my memory for causing a "EURKEA!" moment when it comes to my gaming habits. It happened with Mirror's Edge Catalyst. A game, that while not particularly special in my pantheon (currently ranks #95 out of 246 games), allowed me to realize that I prefer repetition of a challenging task over discovery and exploration. Donut County has made me realize something about myself regarding puzzle games. I actually enjoy puzzle games if they're easy! Yea! I know! It seems silly that it would have taken me until now for me to realize this but DC finally let me put the pieces together. I don't want to rack my brain for a solution in a lengthy puzzle game that I know will only continue to increase in difficulty and innovate on concepts. I want something simple. Something that doesn't force me to look up the solution in a guide on a forum or follow a walkthrough on YouTube. It also helps if it has a particularly distinct aesthetic such as The Witness which Donut County clearly also has in its favor compared to the collection of 2D corridor games I'd dabbled with in the past (The Bridge, The Swapper, In Between). Would I recommend Donut County? 100%. If you're willing to sacrifice a small amount of your profile's average trophy rarity, I think Donut County is a splendid dalliance to enjoy to break up the rhythm between lengthier experiences. I personally managed to earn the 75.89% rarity platinum in 4 days and 21 hours but you can easily earn it in under 2 hours if you have a proper evening to spare. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that it has a surprisingly fun boss fight towards the end with a hilarious subversion if you by all unfathomable incompetence manage to lose it. I'm surprised by how well thought out it was and honestly it makes me all the more excited to check out Ben Esposito's latest project, Neon White (which released today on the PlayStation Store!). I've heard nothing but rave reviews for the game and saw my strimmer Joseph Anderson love it during his brief time with it. I don't even hesitate to say that I WILL play and platinum it sometime in 2023 and I would be shocked if it doesn't score an 8/10 or higher, it looks that good. 2022 is winding to a close and it's almost time for me to do my own Game Awards... but there's one more title I've gotta wrap up before we get there. Until then! Panda Score: 7.1 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 1.9 / 10 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted December 17, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 17, 2022 Game: Golf Club Wasteland Analysis: I bought Golf Club Wasteland for $1.99 in mid-September 2022. It looked like it could be a surprise indie darling... welp. Why Golf Club Wasteland? This game seemed like it had everything up my alley. 1) It was on a deep discount during a mammoth sale. 2) The trophy guide said it could be platinumed within 10 hours. 3) It had a unique, quirky concept. A golf game but make it apocalyptic! 4) The platinum rarity was a very reasonable 15% which meant it would offer some challenge but not anything too outside of my comfort zone. 5) The game was created by Demagog Studio. a small team based out of Serbia! Hey, that's in the Balkans! That's also a country I haven't played a game from yet! I was super intrigued to see what a game from that realm of the world would feel like. All I truly know about Serbia is that a friend once traveled to Belgrade and called it "overrated" as well as the fact they produce phenomenal basketball talent, look no further than Nikola Jokic. A Reasonable Challenge Mode - Once you get through the initial few levels that serve as a tutorial for the very simple mechanics of the game, you'll be given the choice between Story and Challenge mode. I choose Challenge since the trophy guide said I should. This is what YOU should do as well. It prevents you from being forced to play through all 34 levels all over again as you need to complete Challenge mode in order to unlock Iron mode. The difference between Story and Challenge is you actually have a limited number of strokes to finish "par". You may only have 7, 9, 12, 18 shots, etc... as you're first playing the game, this will be incredibly daunting. You'll woefully underestimate shots or blast the ball into hazards. I found putting to be extremely obtuse. I'd hit far too lightly after lining up the shot with the hole and always have to slightly over aim beyond a certain point to ensure it actually reached my intended destination. The environments and length of the course will radically increase once you're beyond the first 10 or so levels. I remember seeing the full map scan on one with 18 strokes and thinking: "good lord this is gonna suck if I fail at the end." It sucked when I failed at the end. Still, this mode isn't too bad. I found the dialogue/background vocal anecdotes to be wholeheartedly pointless. They never captured any of my attention. I thought the environments themselves were solid. But honestly, I found myself most annoyed with how slow the game was. Your player character has to jetpack after the golfball wherever you hit it and that "slow the game down to a grind" sensation as you're waiting for the little spacesuit man in the television to get to the location so you can continue playing the game grates on you after awhile... still, I made it to the end. 34 holes is a pretty short game and I managed to beat it in around 2 hours. It then took me around another 30 minutes to earn all the miscellaneous trophies I had missed in story mode. These are incredibly simple. A lot of them are just doing goofy things in specific levels or simply waiting for your guy to react to the background vista while playing. Overall, I'd had rated the game at around a 6.7/10 at this point crediting it for a novel concept but ultimately deducting points from a low 7 due to lackluster replayability given the unbearably slow transition screens while pausing and just general lethargicness during moment to moment gameplay. Too bad I had one trophy left to earn. Iron Mode aka "Serbians Love To See You Suffer" - I honestly did not read what Iron Mode entailed before deciding to boot the game up for the first time. All I knew was the trophy guide said that the challenge would be made much more doable by save scumming / cloud loopholing your way to victory instead of having to do it legitimately. I've done my fair share of manipulation with this tactic on Neon Abyss, Pac-Man, & most memorably, The Banner Saga 2 DLC trophies. I thought to myself: "if I could reload 90+ times for TBS2 I can def do this no sweat." Then I realized the full scale of the challenge... you not only can't finish over par and have a stroke limit (as in Challenge mode). Hitting any hazard of any kind (except for sand) will lead to AUTOMATIC failure and reset you back down to Hole #1. Uhh.... what? Are you insane? I realized what I had just signed up for. But I pressed onward, as we trophy hunters do. Truthfully, up to around Hole 14, I was making very good, reasonable progress. It had only taken me an hour even with these impediments and the odd level taking me 8-10 minutes worth of retries but I was already nearly halfway there. and then I hit Hole 15.... I cannot begin to describe to you how infuriating the next 50 minutes of retries would be. The level seems remarkably simple. With 18 strokes, despite its annoying length, you don't really have any hazards for the first 2/3 of the level. But good lord... those bloody islands... particularly that last, puny island right before the finish.... drove me bloody insane. Legitimate anger at a video game that I haven't felt since... playing FIFA competitively online a few years ago? I had completely forgotten what the sensation was like. A genuine perplexion at how stupidly maddening a dumb game mechanic can be. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M UNDERSHOOTING IT EVERY GODDAMN TIME??? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE???? WHY DOES THE PROJECTION ARROW SHAKE WHEN I SHOOT AT MAX STRENGTH??? You'll try high-arching shots. You'll undershoot. You'll try slightly less powerful, aimed shots. You'll overshoot and the ball will roll off into the water. This would be fine if the game didn't ask you to quit the application, reupload your Cloud save, open the application, sit through the crappy opening logo animations, click start, click continue game, click actual start on the level, and FINALLY load in at the most AGONIZINGLY slow speed possible. You've now combined the general annoyance of the base game's apathy toward player momentum and a desire to get to the next shot as soon as possible and fusioned it with this abomination of a challenge and created something truly cruel and inhumane. I could feel myself spiraling and failing on earlier shots in the level that I had mesmerized to a science. I finally gathered myself. OR I got lucky? I beat the level. I then completed Holes 16 & 17 in 5 minutes. and then I hit Hole 18.... Honestly. **** Serbia. What is this dogsh!t? This was an idiotic mechanic in the base game without the iron mode limitations and unironically put the hardest level in the entire game smack dab in the middle due to these stupid ass squirrels. You have to hit the ball with such a stupid amount of precision. But the reality is the game isn't built for that. There is volatility on every shot as is only human when you're aiming with your thumb on an analog stick. You'll try high-arching shots and continue to undershoot as you did on Hole 15. You'll suffer. You'll scream. You'll try another strategy. You'll fail even worse and now fail on your first shot for 5 attempts in a row. You'll scream some more. You'll ask yourself why you bought this game and put yourself through this. You're already halfway done. You're too far committed. Maybe next year you should make it a point to buy no games that ask you to save scum in this manner. Who the hell enjoys this? Could you IMAGINE doing this without save scumming? **** Demagog Studio. This level is notorious for how exasperated it will make the player. I persisted. It somehow, shockingly, only took me 1 hour to finally crack with enough persistence. I opted for the strategy of putting the ball as close to the edge as possible on each log so I could ensure I could high-arch with reasonable depth and not accidentally fling it off the edge or undershoot it. These 2 holes placed so close to one another was a masterstroke of incompetence. Nothing else in the rest of the game is as challenging as this. I think the only other level that gave me a little hassle was Hole 32 but that was mostly due to my incompetence and it only took 30 or so minutes. But these two? Undistilled suffering in its purest form. It took me 5 hours to beat Iron Mode. Essentially 2 of those hours were spent on 2 levels. I earned the 15.11% rarity platinum in 3 days and 1 hour. The 169 other platinum earners are insane people for subjecting themselves to this just as I did. Would I recommend Golf Club Wasteland? Absolutely not. I was willing to forgive the game's general slowness during Challenge Mode as being a purposeful artistic decision made by the developers as they clearly wanted the player to slow down, take their time, enjoy it at a leisurely pace, and occasionally admire the environments as the in-game character does when he comes across a particularly awe-inspiring view. But to combine that misery with the high stakes and repetitiveness required for Iron Mode... it's an unforgivable sin. Player movement should have been instantaneous. Restarts needed to be Celeste-tier quick. They weren't. As punishment, I will never play another game from Demagog Studio ever again. I don't care if they stumble themselves into the next Hollow Knight a few years out from now. I can't play a game from a studio that is so obviously antagonistic to a player's time whether it's dastardly and intentional or disgustingly ignorant and a gross example of complete incompetence at every fundamental level of game design. What a banger to end the year on. Panda Score: 4.9 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 7.1 / 10 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted December 24, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 24, 2022 (edited) RealM722's Games Played in 2022 Year-In-Review It's that time of year again folks... the end of it! As December winds down to a close it's time to pause and reflect on our gaming activity. While the Sony PlayStation 5 Wrap-Up does an alright job of summarizing what happened in a given year, it can't quite compare to the meticulous analysis done by oneself trying to comprehend the year's activity in its totality. Hence, we do these awards. As a small disclaimer, Dead Cells will NOT be eligible to receive any despite my re-reviewing it this year as it already took the cake for my Game of the Year Award for 2019, and these posts more or less exist to give some shine and permeance to games that I feel deserve it. Without further ado, here are the games eligible for 2022! Games Played in 2022 Ranked: #1. Hades (9.73 rating) #2. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (9.58 rating) #3. Horizon Forbidden West (9.30 rating) #4. Shadow Tactics (8.80 rating) #5. The Forgotten City (8.80 rating) #6. Undertale (8.70 rating) #7. Rollerdrome (8.60 rating) #8. Sid Meier's Civilization VI (8.40 rating) #9. FIFA 22 (8.40 rating) #10. Desperados III (8.35 rating) #11. Katamari Damacy Reroll (7.88 rating) #12. Paradise Killer (7.84 rating) #13. Road 96 (7.80 rating) #14. Apotheon (7.70 rating) #15. Super Time Force Ultra (7.67 rating) #16. Wattam (7.60 rating) #17. A Short Hike (7.56 rating) #18. Mark of the Ninja Remastered (7.55 rating) #19. Unpacking (7.50 rating) #20. Astro's Playroom (7.50 rating) #21. Team Sonic Racing (7.50 rating) #22. Rogue Legacy (7.40 rating) #23. Persona 5 Strikers (7.20 rating) #24. Firewatch (7.20 rating) #25. The Solitaire Conspiracy (7.10 rating) #26. Donut County (7.10 rating) #27. Arcade Archives: Libble Rabble (7.08 rating) #28. Ikenfell (7.04 rating) #29. The VideoKid (7.00 rating) #30. My Time at Portia (6.88 rating) #31. GoNNER (6.88 rating) #32. Neon Abyss (6.80 rating) #33. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (6.80 rating) #34. South of the High Circle (6.70 rating) #35. Foregone (6.60 rating) #36. DOOM 64 (6.60 rating) #37. Wreckfest (6.50 rating) #38. Party Golf (6.40 rating) #39. Peaky Blinders: Mastermind (6.40 rating) #40. Arcade Game Series: Ms. Pac-Man (6.35 rating) #41. Telling Lies (6.30 rating) #42. Type:Rider (6.30 rating) #43. The Sojourn (6.30 rating) #44. Machinarium (6.30 rating) #45. Fractured Minds (6.00 rating) #46. Madden NFL 22 (6.00 rating) #47. Kiai Resonance (6.00 rating) #48. Pacific Wings (6.00 rating) #49. The Deer God (5.90 rating) #50. Lost in Random (5.40 rating) #51. Popeye (5.20 rating) #52. Golf Club Wasteland (4.90 rating) 2021 RealM722 Game Awards 2020 RealM722 Game Awards 2019 RealM722 Game Awards WOW! What an eclectic list of games. The reason why I like to include previous years' posts at the end of these is it helps me compare the overall quality on a year-to-year basis. From a glance, it appears as though 2022 lacked some of the high-end talents of the last two classes given both 2020 and 2021 had 12 games which scored a 8.0 rating or higher while this year finished with 10. Still, this year has seen the expansion of the middle class of sorts with over 29 games scoring a 7.00 rating or higher. I'd also argue that the top of the fourth 6.0 tier is impressively strong as well with two fascinating Chinese games in My Time at Portia and Neon Abyss. All in all, I consider it to be a GOOD gaming year where I felt challenged and got to experience some genres that I had never sampled before in my entire life. But now it's time to get to the individual awards! We've continued to expand the range and scope of these prizes in an effort to give each worthy game an appropriate amount of shine. I typically try to keep the negative awards to a minimum as I like to think of this post as a celebration of the medium rather than a critique but I'll have a few of those dabbled in as well. Let's dive in! Easiest Game Hardest Game Grind of the Year --- --- Analysis: Starting things off nice and slow, I didn't have to think too hard for my Easiest Game of the Year and it has to go to Unpacking! What an absolutely delightful game. It has an extremely easy platinum which is a given but isn't a hollow or cheap experience in the slightest. There are some genuine narrative moments that occur while organizing the various rooms you'll be tasked with and it honestly put Australia on the map for me as a country that has a bubbling Indie scene which I can't wait to see grow in the coming years! Hardest Game, as its namesake, posed a far greater challenge for me. I initially leaned towards the likes of Neon Abyss or Team Sonic Racing as those were sizable 30-hour challenges but they largely needed repetition and practice more than anything in order to be conquered. Rogue Legacy though? It's challenging in a retro sense. Even with the ability to use the Cloud loophole for Ergophobia which I abused plenty, it still took me 35 hours to earn the platinum and stands out as a game that definitely shows its age as an indie hit from before the indie boom. Finally, for Grind of the Year, I had a number of options from the aforementioned Rogue Legacy to Neon Abyss to My Time at Portia to even smaller titles like Party Golf but for whatever reason, Persona 5 Strikers is the game I most associate with the word "grind" from this year. It is almost 100% because of the Dynasty Warriors-style gameplay. OR going back and forth to that Biliken Statue to grind to Level 99 before entering the proper endgame content. I think without it, Civ 6 would have won the category in a landslide given the 50 hours it took me to beat it and all its DLC content but truthfully I enjoyed the various scenarios so much that even though it lasted longer game experience-wise, Persona 5 Strikers felt like a more laborious endeavor towards the end. Biggest Surprise Biggest Bust "I Just Didn't Get It" --- --- Analysis: There were A LOT of games that pleasantly surprised me in 2022. I was impressed by Apotheon's visuals, surprisingly decent story, and albeit janky yet unique gameplay. The Solitaire Conspiracy from Mike Bithell and co. managed to captivate my attention and awaken an interest in the classic computer card game that I never knew I had. Hell, Astro's Playroom was actually as good as a lot of people said it was! But the biggest surprise of the year is Shadow Tactics. There is no argument to be had here. Thanks to Cassylvania, I discovered a broad new genre that I absolutely adore and even ended up playing another Top 10 games on my list for the year (Desperados III) simply because of how much I loved Mimimi Games' initial production. The memorable band of characters. The unintentionally hilarious repetitive guard dialogue. I love that game to bits and it won't be the last you see of it on this list. As for the Biggest Bust, this is a category I actually struggled with a bit which is a good thing. I managed to avoid complete failures or games I wholeheartedly misjudged by and large in 2022. But I'd be remiss if I didn't say I expected a fair bit more from Wreckfest. It was an all-in-all forgettable experience that wasn't even all that great as an empty calories mindless racer while I listen to podcasts. I expected more from a game that bandies itself for its greatest destruction. Finally, the "I Just Didn't Get it" category (created solely for not loving Gorogoa in 2021), it HAS to be Lost in Random. I have seen a number of YouTubers rave about the game and its aesthetic. Some love the bizarrely intricate gameplay system that doesn't need to be all that complicated. Tim Burton is still in business for a reason. The game just missed for me in all the areas that counted. Most Innovative Bang for Buck Lost Potential --- --- Analysis: Katamari Damacy was released in 2004 and its remastered version for modern audiences in 2020 has been a revelation for those of us who enjoy basking in niche hits from the past. I can't believe how endlessly charming it is. From the ridiculous premise of your father being pissed at you when your katamari isn't big enough to trying to circumnavigate an entire level cluttered with cow-related memorabilia in order to scoop up a mega cow... HOW IS THE SOUNDTRACK SO DAMN GOOD? While it may take a minute for some to get adjusted to the controls I believe it's a worthwhile experience for all those trying to broaden their gaming horizons. Bang for Buck (or best game for the lowest price) is once again a super easy category this year. I got FIFA 22 via PS+ and proceeded to pour the next 50 hours of my life into it while delighting in its many game modes and making some friends along the way! Last year it was FF7R, this year it wa FIFA 22, I can't wait what gem Sony lays at my doorstep in 2023! Finally, for Lost Potential, it was a heavyweight battle between Neon Abyss and My Time at Portia. I eventually settled on the latter as while I feel Neon Abyss has some bloat and shortcomings in many key aspects for a great roguelike, I think the ceiling on what My Time at Portia COULD have been with a better art style and less grind is a bit heartwrenching. I LOVE me some farm simulators. I LOVE a game with a huge cast of villagers you can get to love you by helping them out and learning about their lives. I've sampled the peak of the genre in Stardew Valley and pre-2006 Harvest Moon titles. My Time at Portia exceeds them in some surprising aspects and falls disgustingly short in too many others that I can't help but feel that in a different timeline its one of my favorite games of All-Time. But in this one? It barely cracks the Top 30 of games played in a single year. Best Trophy Icon Worst Trophy Exp. Best Trophy List --- --- Analysis: I greatly respect a developer that goes through the effort of making as many unique trophy icon designs as possible. Most people don't care about this stuff. Just look at how well Need for Speed sells every year and nobody aside from a couple of disgruntled trophy hunters call out the fact they repeat the same image 40 times on a single list. Civ 6 has 98 trophies when including all of the various DLC packs and they created a distinct image for each and every one of them. I respect that! I appreciated the "no more turns" icon for the plat so much I made it my 8,000th trophy milestone. It's also just an awesome game in general. Check it out if you've somehow ignored its sphere of influence until now! "Worst Trophy Experience" is a new category I'm debuting this year to replace Worst Trophy Icon and the "winner" is the last game I played this year, Golf Club Wasteland. 90% of the game is fine. You will enjoy it decently enough as a unique golf game in a novel environment. Then they introduced the nightmare that is Iron Mode with all the slowness from the normal game with added annoyance and drainage of the soul that comes from booting up the game every time you need to reload your Cloud Save. It sucked. I don't recommend it. Finally, ending on a high note, how about that FIFA 22, man? It's the first game to appear twice on this list and I really do think it's deserving. Those trophies were created in a manner to encourage players to sample a little bit from each game mode and I just remember the blast I had in the Volta mini-games, cultivating stars in my Ultimate Team such as Memphis Depay, and of course, going online and meeting some awesome people. Good job EA! Best Man Best Woman Best Animal --- --- Analysis: Now we're getting to the really fun categories. Best Boy was incredibly stacked this year. I had multiple nominations from multiple games. My beloved Hades had both tough boss daddy and Zagreus himself fighting for the top spot. Undertale had the unforgettable Sans and Papyrus. Shadow Tactics had Hayato's abrasive mercenary type that who's cold heart slowly thaws to show he really does grow to love the cast of misfits he's ended up with. Mugen even more so. But man... HOW CAN YA BEAT MY BEST BOY GALERIUS? He literally carries latter playthroughs on his back with how much he helps out the protagonist to carry out various tasks once you get down to the nitty-gritty of the mystery and is a rare kind human in a sea of jerks that is that Roman relic of a city. Moving on over to Best Woman, the task did not get much easier. Aloy from HFW is an icon of the industry and brand ambassador for Sony. Gilda from Ikenfell was adorably bothersome and her design reminds me so much of a friend in real life. Yuki from Shadow Tactics is still on my mind with: "stick the needle, stab the neck". Isabelle has got some Louisiana sass to die for and Lady Love Dies is Nancy Drew but make her a few thousand years old and British! Still, I had to go back to my best girl. Oh, Veronica. How could it be anybody but you? There aren't many characters I'm willing to create jpg's for to include in these awards but Veronica in a catsuit is one of them. I love how mouthy she is and she plays a perfect complement to her sister's more serene nature. She gets enshrined alongside Aerith from FF7R as winners of this award. Finally, for best animal, I'll admit I cheated a bit choosing Claire from A Short Hike. She's an anthropomorphic bird who is ridiculously cute and fun to maneuver but honestly largely wins by default as I struggled to name many other notable animals from games I played this year. Best Review Best Boss Best Extracurricular --- --- Analysis: Holy crap, is FIFA 22 about mess around and steal my Game of the Year Award? 3 Awards this evening! "Best Review" is a new category for 2022 that I decided to create as for however self-indulgent it may seem, I genuinely do go back and read what I've written about games after some time has passed. I like remembering how I felt in the days after platinuming a game and trying to condense a 10, 20, 50+ hour experience into a few thousand words. I feel like I've never written better or more coherently about games than this year. I wrote A LOT about games this year. (110,692 words to be exact). I've written long reviewers than FIFA 22's in the form of DQ11 and Hades but man... something about it just makes me crack up. Maybe it's the booger sugar joke. I feel like I really crystallized my experience with the game and the joy shines through which makes it so enjoyable to come back to. "Best Boss" was another category that made me reminisce. I had so many awesome moments this year. Fighting King Carnelian in DQ11 and getting my ass handed to me over and over again yet stubbornly pushing through. I had the same thing later on in the game with the Gloomnivore fight underground and persisted despite the game's relentless difficulty. Every matchup against Hades was enthralling for me until the first time I finally beat him. The way he monologues a bit before scorching his cape always perfectly set the tone for a tightly contested match. There's more I can list from the unforgettable Lord Yabu in Shadow Tactics which I still think of all these months later, the fight against the Spider Queen in Undertale, and A Hat in Time's marvelous DLC but yanno, Horizon Forbidden West has gotten screwed over enough this year during the game awards that I'd like to give it some love. That fight as Aloy where you're in Las Vegas and go underground to take on a Tideripper for the first time? GOOSEBUMPS! I'm not even joking or exaggerating. The fact the game actually had a fight that exceeded the first time I faced a Stormbird in the open desert in HZD actually boggles my mind and I wanted to praise it for those who underrate the franchise. Finally, "Best Extracurricular" while needlessly wordy is the award for the game that most made me think about it during times OUTSIDE of actually playing the game. Think watching a FIFA 22 YouTuber cuz of FIFA 22. OR playing Road 96 then watching other playthroughs to see the different paths. OR consuming Undertale's fan community content. The winner for me, HAS to be Paradise Killer. The amount of notes I took while playing the game and acting as if I was Lady Love Dies trying to put all the pieces together made me encapsulate the feeling of a detective. Was it completely necessary? No. The game won't ask serious deductions out of you in that sense but I loved following up my suspicions with more details each time I interacted with different characters and wanted to give the game a shoutout given how unknown it still is for far too many players Best World Best Dialogue Best Art Style --- --- Analysis: I don't think I will ever play a game as generous as Dragon Quest 11 for the rest of my life. It's hard to speak much about it without revealing too many spoilers but the kindness with which those developers must have poured their souls into crafting each and every bit of Erdrea for several years is an unfathomably gargantuan task for me to even comprehend. The amount of different, unique settings created all flooded with townsfolk and agh.... listen. It's the ONLY game on this list where I literally RANKED how well I enjoyed each village. From Puerto Valor to Gallopolis, how can it not take the cake? Best Dialogue proved to be much more difficult. I enjoyed the witty banter between the entire cast of Shadow Tactics. I thought Ikenfell had a wonderful group dynamic as well. Yet the only game that honestly had me hanging on every word about what was going to come next or not was honestly Undertale. It's not a game you'd typically think of in this ilk as it's 2D, there's no voice acting, and all of the interactions are relatively short... yet I never once for a moment thought about skipping any of it. Toby Fox keeps you on your toes to see if you're properly paying attention and that is Award worthy in my mind. For Best Art Style, a lot of the time this category is a blood bath. But not this year. Since who can honestly compete with Hades? You know I love a game's style when I mentioned the art director BY NAME in the review and Jen Zee is genuinely that good. From the different atmospheres to character portraits, the game is gorgeous to gaze at and well worth the heaps of praise it's received since its release. Best Soundtrack Best Gameplay Best Story --- --- Analysis: You know we're getting to the Big Boy Awards when it's a lot of the same games repeating at this point. Out of courtesy, I'll mention that the runner-ups for best music was very strong this year. Katamari Damacy Reroll, Ikenfell, and Paradise Killer all had me groovy and vibing while playing. But Undertale may have the GOAT Soundtrack for video games. There's no shame in finishing behind it. It's not single-handedly carried by a beat like Megalovania either. I will regularly listen to the full playlist while working out or going for a walk and there's just not any other game I can even think about reaching those heights. Best Gameplay was a tough cookie. I enjoy Shadow Tactics methodical and calculated puppeteering. FIFA 22 was a blast. Horizon Forbidden West probably has the best open world gameplay I've ever enjoyed. Rollerdrome deserves a shoutout since its been sadly shutout of these entire awards otherwise. But it's Hades. It has to be. That game made time evaporate for me like few others can. Oh, I have a dentist appointment in 2 hours? Lemme get one or two runs in. Before I know it, I'm rushing out the door trying to not be late since I let Supergiant's mesmerizing gameplay loop get a hold of me. I'd still be playing the game right now going for harder and harder runs on Heat Mode if it wasn't for the fact I always challenge myself to stay out of my comfort zone and keep experimenting with new games. Finally, for Best Story, this was a no-contest. I said it when I wrote The Forgotten City's review. I'd be shocked if a game I played the rest of the year kept me as intrigued based solely on its story as much as it did and nothing else was able to come close. If you love yourself a good mystery and piecing together various clothes via interrogation and exploring environments, do yourself a favor and check it out. I'd say it's well worth the money even at full price! Best Game of 2022 Analysis: You knew it, I knew it, this comes as a surprise to absolutely no one but Hades is my Game of the Year for 2022. I honestly think I've somehow underrated it as I haven't constantly brought up and revered it as much as other games that have won for me due to the fact this is such a "normie" take? I don't pride myself on being a hipster but I do like to present games that I feel like haven't gotten all the love they deserve. But... Hades HAS gotten that love! Not from mere indie fans, but across the gaming community. Hell, it was such a hit that they're making a sequel! They never do that! I thought I'd be able to offer some enlightening criticism and believed there was no way it'd surpass Pyre (Supergiant Games' most underrated title) but nah man.. they actually did it. A super enthralling gameplay loop with great variety and an ability to slowly ramp up the difficulty while still unlocking awards for your progress. A marvelous band of characters who you can develop relationships with and slowly get to know more and more the more you invest in them. Jaw-dropping visuals. A lovely trophy list. What's there even to complain about? I'm being a jerk by not heaping enough praise on it as I've done with the likes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Persona 5, and Dead Cells in past years. I'll try to rectify that error going forward. So there you have it folks! This entire thing was a pain in the ass to review and format (and I can't wait to have to edit this post immediately after publishing due to some unforeseen errors) but we've actually got 2022 properly in the books! I'm glad I was able to give some much-deserved flowers and praise to some brilliant games. Rollerdrome and Desperados III honestly got kinda boned not taking a single category home. It's only made worse by the fact I played each of them right next to each other. Road 96 and Wattam are also dope games you should check out. THANK YOU - As is customary, I'd like to wrap up this year with a wonderful shoutout to everyone who bothered to pass through this thread of mine in the last 12 months. I like to think of this thread as a little cottage out in the middle of damn nowhere. The Trophy Checklists folks in general are pretty much in the boondocks of PSNProfiles. If you want the city life, go strolling into a thread debating the value and merit behind 90%+ rarity platinum games and whether or not Sony should put their foot down on them. That's where you'll find all the chaos and crackheads on this forum. But over here? Hope y'all can kick up your feet and enjoy a relaxing drink while talking some games. Whether you're a regular around and I'm used to seeing your face or just passed through once since you were integral in helping with a guide that I appreciated, thank you! See y'all in 2023! ( @YaManSmevz, @Platinum_Vice, @DrBloodmoney, @Troz, @Copanele, @Together_Comic, @Grotz99, @Cassylvania, @Darling Baphomet, @StygianWolf4, @Briste, @NetoStyle, @det_gittes, @PlutoRico, @rjkclarke, @kingofbattle8174, @The_Kopite, @AihaLoveleaf, @NZBigC, @HelixNebula_x, @MD_91, @breakingthegreen) Edited December 24, 2022 by realm722 18 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darling Baphomet Posted December 24, 2022 Share Posted December 24, 2022 Looks like I'm in for a treat since I just bought Paradise Killer on sale a few days ago! Also planning on renting The Forgotten City sometime in the near future. And kudos to you for getting the Civ 6 100% - that's a colossal undertaking, but definitely a fun one. Looks like it's been a productive year for you overall with 52 platinums; not a bad number at all. Unless I platinum something in the next week (which isn't entirely outside the realm of possibility) I'll be a few behind you at 48. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted December 24, 2022 Share Posted December 24, 2022 That's what I like to see. My GOTY in 2019 at #2 and my GOTY in 2021 at #4. (And the game I just started tonight as third worst, oh no...) Definitely need to play Hades. It's been sitting on my shelf all year. I'll get to Desperados III and Civ VI (maybe) once I have more time. Unpacking and Katamari are on my watch list. I'll probably play Rollerdrome because of you. Yuki would've been my best girl, but Veronica is a good choice. I don't know who this non-Mugen character is as best dude. And yeah, Undertale is a no-brainer for best soundtrack. That had to make that award easy. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted December 24, 2022 Share Posted December 24, 2022 15 hours ago, realm722 said: RealM722's Games Played in 2022 Year-In-Review Mah man! Excellent work? By the way, I am not surprised that you know your exact word count from the year given what a meticulous dude you are, but damn. That's impressive. I don't even know how many reviews I wrote, much less how many words they got? 15 hours ago, realm722 said: The reason why I like to include previous years' posts at the end of these is it helps me compare the overall quality on a year-to-year basis. I maaaayyyyyy possibly definitely steal this. 15 hours ago, realm722 said: Easiest Game Hardest Game Grind of the Year --- --- Bruh you and the good Doctor got Unpacking in my backlog, that one's getting busted out when it's time to chill? Also huge props to all the Persona completionists out there, that shit looks time consuming as fuck. 15 hours ago, realm722 said: Most Innovative Bang for Buck Lost Potential --- --- As much as I love Katamari, for whatever reason that last trophy had me like a claustrophobic person in a crowd, like "I gotta get the fuck out of here." A big, loud high five from me to you for handling that shit as swiftly as you did, man.... it definitely deserves its placement here. And yeah, that soundtrack is primo, primo! 15 hours ago, realm722 said: Best Man Best Woman Best Animal --- --- Galerius is giving me huge problems in the character award department, man... he's not just a great dude, but he's a great mechanism as well. How does anyone else compete with that?? 15 hours ago, realm722 said: Best Game of 2022 Man. Yeah, I gotta play Hades. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darling Baphomet Posted December 25, 2022 Share Posted December 25, 2022 On 12/23/2022 at 7:11 PM, Cassylvania said: Definitely need to play Hades. It's been sitting on my shelf all year. I'll get to Desperados III and Civ VI (maybe) once I have more time. Unpacking and Katamari are on my watch list. I'll probably play Rollerdrome because of you. *Highly* recommend Civ VI with the caveat that you may want to hold off on it if you're still playing on a base ps4, as even on PS5 turns can take a while to go through and the game can hitch up. It's not a terrible 100% though; a lot of trophies just require some elaborate setup and are easy once you have a guide for them. Didn't take too long, all things considered - my 100% (sans some trophies I earned years ago) took me ten days, though granted they took almost *all* of those ten days, so you do need to set a bit of time aside for it. Civ VI is definitely a worthy entry in the franchise, though, and made my top games this year. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum_Vice Posted December 25, 2022 Share Posted December 25, 2022 On 24/12/2022 at 11:53 AM, realm722 said: That's where you'll find all the chaos and crackheads on this forum. But over here? Hope y'all can kick up your feet and enjoy a relaxing drink while talking some games. Whether you're a regular around and I'm used to seeing your face or just passed through once since you were integral in helping with a guide that I appreciated, thank you! See y'all in 2023! 100% agree. It feels great to just be considered as being welcome in a sphere of people that are authentic and who appreciate (and analyse) the eclectic range of games available to us. That brings me to my next point: On 24/12/2022 at 11:53 AM, realm722 said: I wrote A LOT about games this year. (110,692 words to be exact). I felt this. It's not only relatable due to how much I wrote myself, but more importantly how much I read of others' opinions and recommendations including your own. Thank you. On 24/12/2022 at 11:53 AM, realm722 said: Games Played in 2022 Ranked It's such a shamethat you didn't enjoy Unpacking as much as I thought you would. Thank you for the culling Golf Club Wasteland and Wreckfest from my backlog, by the way. It does absolutely nothing to outweigh the egregious amount of games you've added to my wishlist (courtesy of every time I scout your profile), but it's kind of nice to occasionally strike something from the list. Meanwhile, I'm so close on pulling the trigger on Paradise Killer... what isn't clicking?!?! Is there anything in particular that you're desperately looking forward to playing in 2023? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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