realm722 Posted January 3, 2023 Author Share Posted January 3, 2023 Game: Moon (Moon: Remix RPG Adventure) Analysis: I bought Moon when it was on sale back in mid-October 2022 for $13.29. This is one of the oldest video games I've ever covered in this thread so buckle up! Why Moon? You have likely never heard of this game despite the fact it's nearly 25 years old. That's not me trying to be condescending or acting as if I'm superior for knowing about it. I had never heard about the game in my entire life until Tim Rogers name-dropped it at the very end of his elaborate, personalized Final Fantasy VI review. If you've ever read even a teensy bit of this thread, you should know by now that I love Tim Rogers. He has a way of speaking about niche PlayStation 1 titles that makes them sound like the coolest and greatest games that have ever existed. Moon is particularly special due to the fact it's surprise rerelease on modern hardware was also noteworthy due to the fact for the first time ever it'd be translated in English! All thanks once again, to our boy Tim. All I truly summarized up until now was that: "Moon Remix RPG isn't like the other girls". What did that actually mean? I had no idea. I had a much greater sense of what the game was likely about when I accidentally spoilered myself in humongous fashion during his sensational review of Boku No Natsuyasumi. DO NOT CLICK if you would like to avoid huge endgame spoilers. I realize now that I'm still being vague about the game and I'd like to be less so but in order to do that I feel like I have to offer some caveats for those who take my recommendations seriously. The Qualifiers for Playing Moon - 1) Do you mind playing games with guides? Because if you're going to embark on this endeavor unless you're the Vasco de Gama of video game players, you're likely going to be confused and stuck over and over again at figuring out what to do next. Remember, this is a PlayStation 1 game. It is not beholden to modern-day conventional norms that hold your hand and will bail you out in a jiffy. There are certain events required for advancing the story that are only available on certain days of the week at certain times. (Oh yea, did I forget to mention the game has a daily week schedule with an active running night/day clock and if you don't save by sleeping in your bed, you get an automatic game over?). If I've somehow not scared you off by this point, papa Realm has found some guides that I have found incredibly useful. This one by SteamAH (user: shinyangelghost) CARRIED me for the majority of my playthrough. It is super simple and easy to follow once you get over how daunting the initial talks is. It's broken the world down into consumable chunks and once you realize the game really does offer you flexibility in terms of what areas you want to tackle first, it gets all the easier. There's just ONE problem. The guide has a critical error and does not mention Beehav the Pirate's love scenario. OR it does so but in such a subliminal fashion that I didn't realize it. I was losing my mind looking for the last "love" I needed to earn one of the last trophies and this was it. If you're ever stuck or lost track of what you need to do next, go ask Adder after completing his initial challenge as he'll offer hints of where to next advance a quest. Of course, as I've linked them, the Fandom Moon RPG Wiki is also very helpful when the prior guide doesn't offer as much info. If you prefer visual aids, this guide for collecting all the animals and this 7-hour speedrun of the game could also be useful. The Qualifiers for Playing Moon (Pt. 2) - 2) Do you get easily frustrated at seemingly simple yet surprisingly tricky minigames? Because if you do, I may hold back on a recommendation as I wouldn't want you coming at me with a pitchfork in this thread several months down the line if I've lead you down this course. There are two specific minigames in mind. First, the Fishing Contest, which is necessary as by winning it you gain the love and affection of Gamakatsu. You must catch 5 fish in 100 seconds. This event is only available on Solardays, so it's recommended you sleep and set a save state on that day as you're going to be retrying this a fair few times. It's also recommended you eat the Kirikiri Bug Sautee at the Wildcat as without it, you're going to catch more junk than fish which will cost you valuable time. I've seen some players complain that this is torturous. I understand where they're coming from even if I don't necessarily agree. I earned it on my 5th attempt after catching 2, 4, 4, & 4 on my previous efforts. Given how close I was, I felt like it was only a matter of time. You must feel out when to press "X" with timing in order to speed up how quickly you can catch them. I got unlucky on my first few efforts and some bites took forever. On my last attempt, I had a fair amount of time to spare. Judge whether or not you wanna put yourself through this. The other, harder minigame skillwise though less luck-based is that of XINGIKSAN. Here is my completion of the final level. Basically, it's flappy bird before flappy bird and it took me around 40 minutes worth of attempts in order to finally beat it. In hindsight, I'll admit I kinda enjoyed it since I enjoy repetitive, bizarrely weird tasks. There's also a 3rd "minigame" required to gain love involving the Birdman and predicting which color bird will pass through next. I say bet on black every damn time until it pops and select the progressively easier birds from there. 3) Are you willing to take the good AND bad of a PS1 classic? The game is dripping with charm. But it is also very slow in parts. Traversing the world at times can feel like it takes far longer than it should. Do we really need to see the Dr. Hager entrance permission scan EVERY time we pass through there? If you're willing, this game is a bundle of joy to bask in if you're of the right mindset. If you're trying to blaze through this to earn a quick platinum and not really engage with the themes or world... you're gonna have a bad time. But enough of that. Now that you've earned your PhD in earning the platinum in Moon before even having played it, it's time for me to talk in super spoilerific detail about it. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. Moon (The Game All About Love) - You are not the hero of Moon. Instead, you end up dropping into this world after a very odd, obtuse introduction where you seemingly play as a Dragon Quest / Final Fantasy-lite game that has everything you'd expect out of a classic (well... this game was released in 1997 so the style wasn't classic back then it was just... the norm?) JRPG. This was a fakeout. The real game starts once you wake up in Gramby's home. There's a Hero wandering about the land that is supposed to save the world from the big evil dragon. But very early on, you'll realize Moon's unique take on the RPG genre by actually revealing how much of a monster the "Hero" in most JRPGs really is. He kills without second thought any creatures in the world as they offer him XP. He storms into people's homes and takes what he likes. He crashes straight through the player character without a care in the world as of course, this is his game. We've all done this. Most of us have played a grand open-world RPG at one time or another. Yet this remarkably unique title from the era of the Clinton administration subverted it all by poking fun at how ridiculous that sort of world would be from any perspective other than that of the main character. Your role as a supporting character is to try and help those who've had their lives upended by the Hero's ways or assist in general wherever possible. This includes saving many animals' souls who've been slain. Helping resolve many townsfolk issues. and advancing the core plot which is that of finishing a rocket project between the King of the town and mad scientist to land the rocket on the moon. By doing these things, you earn "love" which is an indicator of how much you've helped those in need. It's anti-RPG in the sense that there is no combat. There are minigames. There are unique events. But it's truthfully about getting to know the world and enjoying it for its simpler, candid moments. Let me talk about those for a moment. Some Things I Loved in Moon - I disobeyed Tim when he asked readers not to think of him while playing. The very first moment you wake up in Gramby's home and hear the beautiful, majestic melody of Clair de Luna... I wanted to cry. I don't cry often. That song has a special significance to me given how much Tim he used it in his videos whenever conveying deeply personal, severe anecdotes. I listen to it when I read and it fills me with melancholy. I cannot believe that song was in the original game as... damn man. Especially when I see how much the player is cared for by their in-game grandmother and how she'll literally offer baked homemade cookies every day you wake up which is incredibly essential early on... it makes me feel things in ways that few games can. The dialogue in general in the game is magnificent. Many characters are incredibly sharp and have their wonderful quirks that'll endear themselves to you. Some that stand out in my mind include Yoshida, a super-intelligent bird that for his quest will wake you up for midnight classes as he's attending a University and the speeches by Professor Owl are surprisingly profound. (Example - an admission of ignorance is the very first step to the acquiring of knowledge). There's the Old Man who lives in the Windmill and he's hilarious in the way he hates Western culture due to the house next door and how whatever you respond will undoubtedly upset him. There's Lady Techno (a dancing woman in Technopolis) who'll have a mini-existential crisis and show off a branded tattoo on her back that'll make the player character blush. It's all so wonderfully charming and sincere. It's wild how unique it is to play games that haven't been jaded away or play-tested to death that they take away all the age. I have no doubt games have on the whole gotten better in terms of being less obtuse as without a guide, I wouldn't for the life of me have known how to advance certain quests but man... it's just so cool to say I got to enjoy this game when so many few have taken the opportunity. (351 game owners, 93 platinum achievers at the time I post this review) Would I recommend Moon? That depends entirely on your answers earlier to the qualifier paragraphs above. I suspect most people won't play this game. It's a bit of a hard sell given its uniqueness and the general preference of those on a trophy-earning-focused platform. But boy am I glad I did. I want to play every single one of these unique Japanese games from the PS1 / PS2 era whenever they become available on modern hardware. It's so easy to get caught up in the here and now of games releasing but I still feel a strong sense to look back and reflect on releases from the past than always trying to find and seek out the next new diamond in the rough. Maybe that makes me a weirdo. I ultimately earned the 26.50% rarity platinum in 6 days and 9 hours. I'm immensely grateful to Tim for dedicating himself to translating the game and I'm delighted to say it's my first platinum of 2023! We'll see what the rest of the year has in store but I'm optimistic we'll build off the momentum as the months progress. Until next time! Panda Score: 7.7 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.4 / 10 Spoiler Moon: Remix RPG Adventure Notes Date: December 27th, 2022 I’m scared and terrified but let’s finally freaking do this Glacial intro of a kid playing a classic RPG… mom tells him to go to bed during final dragon boss fight OH NO WE GOT SUCKED INTO THE TV BUD Lmao dude with all the satchels hates kids n’ women I can already tell what they’re going for with the townsfolk critiquing the hero for being a dunce chasing the dog Most important currency is LOVE! You got it Mr. Big Head I HEAR THAT CLAIR DE LUNE AT GRAMBY’S HOUSE, TIM. DONT MAKE ME EMOTIONAL This game is fun man… love how unique it is. Ended Day 1 on Love Level 5, Love Disciple! Okay we just got a hella freaky dream with all the characters asking help… Damn we cured Grambys illness <3, up to Level 9! Love Debutante! LOL this entire Adder sequence is hilarious and him ending saying: “God’s walkin’ here!” Is great Okay we’ve got the Dr. Hager outta the Haunted House… now we need to turn in 5 items TOP ITEM - diamond shape, 32R-1 Circuit BOTTOM RIGHT - cooling system rectangle BOTTOM CENTER - MCM engine circle BOTTOM LEFT - 100 liters of HR103% strength alcohol looks like milk bottle TOP CENTER - power console looks like video game controller+screen We’re now level 15! Love’s Backbone! Lmao getting kicked out by the old man FRED IS FREDDIE MERCURY OOOOOH lmao Wow that Gematakstu’s fishing contest took me 5 attempts… got 2, 4, 4, 4 & then 5! On 12/25/2022 at 7:51 AM, Platinum_Vice said: Meanwhile, I'm so close on pulling the trigger on Paradise Killer... what isn't clicking?!?! Sorry for taking so long to reply. I wanted the first post on a new page to be an actual review rather than just a reply but here I am finally getting around to it! Man I really hope I'm not completely out of touch on PK. ? I think it's incredibly unique and the mystery kept my interest for the entire runtime. Some of the final world-scaling hunting for the last requirements for a trophy may be a teensy annoying but I really would love to see some of y'all give your take/review once you play it since I've seen remarkably few people on here discuss it! On 12/25/2022 at 7:51 AM, Platinum_Vice said: Is there anything in particular that you're desperately looking forward to playing in 2023? Now this is a wonderful question. I won't beat around the bush. Let me give you my inklings for how I think games in my backlog are gonna score down the line. 8/10 - Inscryption 7/10 - Cris Tales, Tropico 6, Uncharted: Lost Legacy 6/10 - 9 Monkeys of Shaolin, Among Us, Bugsnax, Castle Crashers, Dandara, Dougrai, Emerald Shores, John Wick Hex, Oure Wow... you just made me realize I don't exactly have a lot of games that have me super excited on my list... thanks for giving me a mini-crisis about my purchasing habits. (Forreal though, I typically keep expectations pretty low unless the game is an OBVIOUS slamdunk. In terms of games in general, I would love to pick up Neon White when on sale as I suspect I'm gonna love it) 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted January 6, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 6, 2023 Game: Stick it to the Man! Analysis: I bought Stick it to the Man! for $1.59 way back in early August 2022 and unfortunately this was a bust of a 100% to kick 2023 off with. Why Stick it to the Man!? - Pretty simple answer. The game was super cheap and it was an easy 100%. I decided to purchase it despite the fact Zoink Games have by-and-large whiffed on their games when it comes to impressing me. I platinumed Fe so long ago its review is literally on the first page of this thread. Last year I played their latest release, Lost in Random and while I admired just how much passion was poured into that, the needlessly convoluted gameplay and half the game's runtime being cutscenes disengaged me. Sadly, even sifting into titles from their older catalog has not changed my impression of them. When You Just Aren't Feeling A Game - I think above any other sensation I felt when playing the game was "this just isn't for me". Listen, doing comedy is difficult. Trying to convey humor in a video game especially so. Stick it to the Man! is a very simple game that has you traverse 10 levels asking you to find thing A that helps solve situation B and so forth. The unique mechanic is your character, Ray, has the ability to read every NPC's mind. This is 1) Necessary for the only gold trophy and 2) How you progress the story at times as certain thoughts create stickers that are relevant to solving different issues that arise in the world. It's extremely simple. The game has a basic jump, a swing mechanic you pull off with R2 when pins are available and that's it. I admire the simplicity given their later error of making things too complicated. But man... I was just checked out from Level 3 onwards. The biggest problem being that I could not hear the dialogue voices read by the NPCs as it comes out of the PS4 controller, I was using a PS5 controller, and I turn off all audio outputs from it since I don't like my controller yelling at me. Could I have enabled that option? Sure. But again, the game's humor really wasn't up my alley and I just wanted to get through the experience in an efficient manner. There are some decent jokes. The embodiment of: "funny. didn't laugh." I appreciate the game's helpful map option which shows question marks for which brains you have and have not scanned yet. They're the "collectibles" of the game and they're really not all that tricky or time-consuming. Aside from the odd miscellaneous trophies which also aren't too difficult, this is a fairly breezy 100% completion. I earned the 11.28% rarity 100% in 22 hours, 23 minutes. Would I recommend Stick it to the Man!? No. I have no doubt this humor is up some people's alley. But it really wasn't up mine. Combined with the fact I find the general aesthetic unappealing to look at and you'll have a game that I'll likely completely forget about within the next few weeks. I think it's fair for me to officially file away "Zoink AB" as a studio that just doesn't make things meant for me and I'm okay with that. I apologize for such a dull and tepid review. Been a little bit off gaming-wise as of late and I suspect I need something engaging gameplay focused to wake me up out of my funk. The last game I played on that scale was Rollerdrome in early November... damn that was a good game. Panda Score: 5.4 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 1.8 / 10 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 2 hours ago, realm722 said: Would I recommend Stick it to the Man!? No. I have no doubt this humor is up some people's alley. But it really wasn't up mine. Combined with the fact I find the general aesthetic unappealing to look at and you'll have a game that I'll likely completely forget about within the next few weeks. I think it's fair for me to officially file away "Zoink AB" as a studio that just doesn't make things meant for me and I'm okay with that. I apologize for such a dull and tepid review. Been a little bit off gaming-wise as of late and I suspect I need something engaging gameplay focused to wake me up out of my funk. The last game I played on that scale was Rollerdrome in early November... damn that was a good game. Thanks for that review. Glad I can finally take it off my maybe-I'll-play-it-maybe-I-won't list. Probably should've listened to your Lost in Random review too, but I was a little too late. I agree with your take on comedy. How many times have you seen it done well in a video game? Not a game that just has a funny character or makes you laugh in a few cutscenes, but one that specifically seems to rely on its jokes to carry the game. I can think of less than ten, which is surprising because it seems like the audience should be there for video games. Why can't they compete with books and video games? I'm going to go ahead and add Lair of the Clockwork God to your backlog. Thank me later. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 2 hours ago, realm722 said: Game: Stick it to the Man! That's a shame. I'm bummed that it wasn't for you (I got a kick out of this game, not the best from a narrative or gameplay perspective but it reminded me of Nick and MTV cartoons I grew up with) but I'm really glad that you gave it a shot. Also I think the write-up was good! When a game doesn't connect with you it's definitely harder to get a group of paragraphs out. On 1/3/2023 at 9:17 AM, realm722 said: Game: Moon (Moon: Remix RPG Adventure) Good shit! I might have to keep this one on deck... I have a sneaking suspicion that after playing FFVI I'll be in the market for this exact type of thing? 7 minutes ago, Cassylvania said: I'm going to go ahead and add Lair of the Clockwork God to your backlog. Thank me later. Yo I owe you a thanks for that btw, I got Lair after reading your review and finally got around to playing it last year... enjoyed the shit out of it? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted January 9, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 9, 2023 Game: Return of the Obra Dinn Analysis: I bought RotOD when it was on sale for $13.99 back in late December 2022. We've got ourselves a GOTY Contender for 2023 within the first weeks of January! Why Return of the Obra Dinn? One of the things I've prided myself on over the years in the curation of this thread is the fact I like to bring a spotlight to lesser known games. I don't think Return of the Obrain Dinn qualifies in that regard. It's not exactly an indie sensation such as Stardew Valley or Hollow Knight, but it has 17k+ overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam. Its creator, Lucas Pope, is also incredibly well-known gives his debut indie hit, Papers, Please (a game I have never played yet adore anyway). I love this man. I'd love to pick his brain over an interview. He has managed to create two wildly different yet enthralling puzzle games revolving around being a border checkpoint immigrationion inspector under an oppressive totallarian regime and an insurance insepctor from the 1800s. He thinks and creates games in unique circumstances that few auteurs have managed to capture. I hope he continues in his endeavors, though it's a shame he's insistent on keeping things small in scope as it means his actual game output will be few and far between. In case my gushing hasn't been obvious enough, you should play Return of the Obra Dinn. It doesn't matter if you've been "spoiled" regarding some of its unique twists and tricks. I had seen Joseph Anderson's review of the game before playing it. I thought that this would be a super quick brisk platinum where I would remember some key details from that video and breeze through it. Instead, I had a surprisingly enthralling time rediscovering the game and trying to connect of its many pieces. I'm so glad it exists and I'm going to spend the remainder of this review singing its praises. HELLA SPOILERS BELOW. A Puzzle Game that Gets Me - I am someone who does not typically enjoy puzzle games. I've recognized this in my gaming preferences after trying out wildly different games from the genre over the last several years. The Sexy Brutale, Minit, FEZ, Gorogoa, The Bridge & The Swapper to name a few. I would not classify any of those games as ones I've thoroughly enjoyed. On the higher end of the spectrum are games like Katamari Damacy Reroll, Unpacking, Donut County, & The Witness. But all of those games are distinctly unique. I don't know if some of you would even consider Katamari a "puzzle" game. It kind of is in the sense you need to survey the map and figure out which objects are most suitable to be scooped up given your current size and constantly keep that in mind while rolling about the entire place. Unpacking is a cozy game that doesn't stress the player out but has such a warm atmosphere that it was a joy to sift through. Donut County is fun and quirky despite its simple mechanics, and The Witness can really escalate the complexity compared to every other game on this list but I loved it most for its jaw-droppingly gorgeous open world. Then we get to Return of the Obrain Dinn. What a magnficient concept for a video game. First of all, the entire premise. An insurance inspector FROM THE 1800s and just saying the phrase: "East India Company" makes you feel like you're reading something out of a textbook from your history class in high school. You need to review and ascertain the fates and brutal deaths of an entire ship and determine who was responsible. You will be given limited clues and decisive information and must trust your inclinations in order to progress through the mystery. It's brilliant. I struggle with puzzle games because I quite frankly don't have the patience for increasing complexity in concepts when I know I could just fly through it by looking up the solution online. But this? I didn't want to cheat myself out of the experience. I felt like a proper detective trying to uncover what happened to all these poor souls on this voyage and looking up the answers would rob me of the joy of finding the proper conclusion. I don't feel that way about other games because they don't have "stakes". Yet this one created that sensation in me which led to my enjoyment. My Favorite "AHA!" Moments - The game wastes absolutely no time instantly getting you roped into deducing what exactly happened on this supposed routine venture. Captain Robert Witterell killing multiple crew members before taking his own life immediately had me intrigued into understanding how this badass lost the faith of those under his authority. I was initially perplexed why he talked about his wife... Abigail... and how she didn't notice that he had killed himself given her corpse in bed. Then I realized. YO. THIS GAME IS OUTTA SEQUENCE. She was already dead when he killed himself and he, despite all the chaos of the ship being raveged by a kraken took enough care to lay her body to rest in her natural bed. The game does such a fantastic job of building up tension before each reveal of each passenger's gruesome death. Abigail's particularly. Her calling out for her husband... only to see the rigging come crashing down her. The brutality of hearing grown men whince and grimace as their limbs are torn apart by beasts or they're speared through the heart by mermaids. The actual puzzle deducing itself was a blast. I relied on a fair few tricks in order to slowly whittle down the # of fates I had left to solve. I depended GREATLY on the sketchbook image in the book created by the artist. I LOVE how you discover that becomes a real, playable scene later in the game to solve. I deduced many positions (Topmen, Midshipmen, etc..) based on how they grouped together typically. I was able to use the #'s of members to make some key deductions for the Indian crew members when they fell. I had the "AHA!" moment as to the Surgeon's Mate when I realized he kept winding up next to Henry Evans in so many scenes when someone had just died or was bleeding out. I finally managed the same for the Carpenter when I found him with a hammer when the ship was being terrorized by mammothly sized spiders. I also depended upon the few voice lines recorded before each scene to try and verify accents where possible. The game is so damn good about this stuff. I love when it offers you subtle information very early on and you always keep it in the back of your mind for the future. You'll discover super early on that a seaman's brother had died in an inccident involving ropes and for that reason he blames the only Danish seaman on board and kills him. By going through the pasenger list, you end up realizing there are only two "Peters" and one of them must be the one killing the Dane. At the very end of the game, the first death of the entire crew, you finally see the other Peter die in the accident and if you remembered that key detail from earlier you can piece it all together. I've only mentioned a few of the moments here but the game is chock full of these details and I'm sure others had even better moments such as piecing together the layout of the ship for where certain members of their rank would typically be found. Room For Improvement - Despite all my praise for the game, I still should mention that while I think this game is fantastic and love that it exists, I do have some minor gripes with it. I imagine as many others will, there will be a temptation to "meta game". The game requires you to solve 3 fates accurately in order to let you know whether you've answered them correctly or not. This is a necessary concession that the game must have as it's still a video game. Whenever I felt pretty damn sure about 2 fates, I would start randomly throwing out guesses on any 3rd fate in order to see if anything stuck. Many times, it did. I couldn't help but feel some of these solutions were "unearned" but I have to imagine this is how a lot of people will approach the game as it's only human nature. Especially when some deaths are unclear. I don't know if this happened to anybody else, but sometimes death depictions are hard to decipher due to the art style. This is most egregiously relevant with the "shell" and how It-Beng Sa & Filip Dahl "burned" to death yet I only got them correct since I selected through every damn death available untilt he game finally gave it to me. I also struggled greatly with Bun-Lan Lim's death since I put "ate" since I THOUGHT the sea mermaid spear lady had bit her neck leading her to bleed to death but the correct answer was "clawed". I imagine some others mileage may vary on this. I LOVE the art style of this game. I wouldn't change it to something else, even soemthing more visually descriptive simply because I think the look is iconic and I adore how distinct it is. My hope is that in the next few years, Return of the Obra Dinn serves as the inspiration for more titles to put their own little twist on a game such as this. It won't be easy. But I think it's possible that this game serves as the template for an even greater puzzle game a few years down the line. At least I hope it does. Would I recommend Return of the Obra Dinn? Yes, absolutely. This is the best puzzle game I have ever played in my life. I managed to take thousands of words of notes over it, jump back and forth to old scenes I had already watched in order to comb over them and determine if I had missed anything. Far more often than not, I had let a detail slipped! Such as not even noticing the Helmsman being flung to his death by the kraken on the 8th scene of "THE DOOM" or realizing the coward pursurer hiding from the killer spiders when his fellow passengers are slain to death trying to stop it. It's a spectacular game in every sense of the word and I've somehow gone this entire review without mentioning this music. SOLDIERS OF THE SEA MAN!!! How is it even legal for music to be that good? I ultimately earned the 57.45% rarity platinum in 2 days and 1 hour. The only trophy that will pose a slight inconvenience will be "Captain Did It" but I honestly kinda enjoyed it since you get to see every scene from the game one last time and truly comprehend the full context of the story and how everything fell apart. It's only the 3rd game I've completed of 2023 and I'll be stunned if Return of the Obra Dinn doesn't take home at least one award come year's end. Until next time! Panda Score: 8.33 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.8 / 10 Spoiler HERE ARE MY RAW NOTES FOR THE GAME FROM COMPLETION. In case you wanna compare my completion to y'alls and in what order I did it, here it is! Return of the Obra Dinn This game’s dope, let’s finally play it Captain R. Witterall! Okay came back a day later from playing. I thought this was gon be a cupcake since I remember seeing videos on the game and thought it’d be easier than it was. NOPE! This game is kicking my butt right now and I’ve gotta refocus. I have 3 fates confirmed. 1st Fate - Robert Witterel, Captain, killed himself with a gun 2nd Fate - William Hoscut, First Mate, was shot by Robert Witterel 3rd Fate - Abigail Hoscut Witterel, Passenger, was crushed by fallen rigging Now I need to progress from there. Side Note: The scene with Abigail getting crushed and the reveal of the beast is FANTASTIC! Amazing what can be done with music and sound effects before the reveal. I have a theory that the two woman (given how few women are on board), are Emily Jackson & Miss Jane Bird. Two passengers. I chose the younger looking woman (to the right of Abigail) as “Miss” as I imagine that’s what you’d use to call a younger, unmarried woman. I also think this would be useful…. There are 60 passengers. I want to break them down by nationality. 23x English (1x Captain - DONE, 1x Second Mate, 1x Third Mate, 1x Fourth Mate, 1x Surgeon, 1x Surgeon’s Mate, 1x Cook, 1x Helsman, 1x Artist, 2x Passenger, 1x 3rd Mate’s Steward, 1x 4th Mate’s Steward, 3x Midshipmen, 1x Topman, 5x Seaman) 5x India (1x Ship’s Steward, 4x Seaman) 4x China (4x Topman) 4x Formosa (4x Passenger) 3x Scotland (1x First Mate - DONE, 1x Passenger - DONE, 1x Topman) 3x Ireland (1x Butcher, 1x 2nd Mate’s Steward, 1x Seaman) 3x Russia (1x Topman, 2x Seaman) 2x America (1x Carpenter, 1x Carpenter’s Mate) 2x Wales (1x 1st Mate’s Steward, 1x Seaman) 2x Austria (1x Bosun, 1x Gunner) 1x Sierra Leona (1x Seaman) 1x Denmark (1x Seaman) 1x New Guinea (1x Topman) 1x Persia (1x Topman) 1x Sweden (1x Captain’s Steward) 1x Italy (1x Passenger) 1x Poland (1x Gunner’s Mate) 1x France (Bosun’s Mate) Okay the first scene involving the Captain shooting Hoscut doesn’t offer us much aside from the fact that the man next to Hoscut when he gets shot COULD be his 1st mate’s steward? But in the photo he’s using a gun which would make him a… what exactly? Firing squad personnel? He then gets his throat slashed by the Captain. In the 2nd scene where the dude gets knife slashed by the Captain… one of the dudes up top who is bald jumps down. In the 3rd scene, that dude who is bald gets CLUBBED and killed by the Captain, who takes a knife stab to the rib cage. In the 4th scene, the Captain suicides himself and reveals details that made it possible for me to get the first few fates completed. Now in the 8th/8th scene of “THE DOOM” we get the shocking reveal of Abigail getting clubbed by the fallen rigging… how did she not see his suicide body right outside the door? That’s irrelevant. She calls out the dude “Martin” which is the dude in the fancy hat which makes me think he’s the Third Mate, Martin Perrot. He’s standing fairly close to the captain which would make sense. OH DANG I MISSED A DUDE IN THIS SCENE GETTING SNAGGED IN THE AIR BY THE BEAST! But I don’t think he’s dead? He’s getting snagged by the beast but what would you label that as… “strangled by a beast”? He seems like he could be in chef or surgeon attire… There’s also the dude with all the circle tattoos who is torn apart in this scene but damn man… I am struggling to figure out who he could be. In the 7th/8th scene of “THE DOOM” we see him get torn apart. I’m thinking he has to be one of these rare nationalities. Persia/Scotland/Russia/New Guinea/Sierra Leone? I’m gonna go with Maba for now just as a gut instinct. There are two dudes throwing a rifle to one another. I imagine that’s a mate/steward combo of some time? There’s a dude with the stripes on the ship who is build and makes me think he’s French since I associate that look with the French on an olden ship. There’s also the Asian looking dude in this photo on the image away from everyone else and I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to discern from him here? In the 6th/8th scene of “THE DOOM”, it’s absolutely mental. A dude is getting sucked up by the beast in the air and a powder is thrown but I imagine the beast killed him? I dunno. It looks like one of the dudes threw the powder… OH WOW I JUST FOUND A DUDE IN A TURBAN FALLING OVERBOARD! I HAVE to think he fell overboard to his death.. In the 5th/8th scene of “THE DOOM”, the dude gets CRUSHED by a loose cannon. It says I can reveal his identity but.. how? I just guessed 3rd Mate’s Steward… since he’s standing next to him… YOOOO I GOT IT! 6 FATES COMPLETED!!!! LET’S GO BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4th Fate - Edward Spratt, Artist, was strangled to death by a beast. 5th Fate - Roderick Andersen, 3rd Mate’s Steward, was crushed by a loose cannon. 6th Fate - Maba, Topman, was torn apart by a terrible beast. In the 4th/8th scene of “THE DOOM”, we see a dude LOSE HIS FREAKING HEAD. I’m gonna put… decapitated by a terrible beast even if the cannon potentially shot him? The French dude, Maba, and the dude who gets knifed by the Captain are all here. Not much else to detail to go on… In the 3rd/8th scene of “THE DOOM”, we see the dude who got decapitated getting crushed by some of the tentacles. Another unrelated balding dude there holding onto him. Another dude with a beard getting strangled by a beast against the window… In the 2nd/8th scene of “THE DOOM”, I was already able to figure out who the artist was and how he died being strangled… that’s a cute, clever trick by the game. We have a dude just on the interior bottom of the ship looking in looking hella disturbed at what’s transpiring. He appears to be attending to some food with a spoon in his hand so maybe cook/chef related? The Asian looking dude is enjoying some food and a drink with one of the dues rolling dice. We also see the 3rd Mate with his Steward (which we already determined) Above board, we have the man with the turban, a young boy with a lantern (maybe another steward?), along with a dude with a hat… that’s definitely a mate/steward relationship potentially. Attending to the dude who was killed who was… In the 1st/8th scene of “THE DOOM”, we see a British accent guy saying: “OVER MY DEAD BODY YOU BLOODY DANE”. He accuses him of killing his brother cuz of an accident with ropes… that dude getting knifed should 100% be the Seaman Dane, Lars Linde. There are two dudes with the same last name as Seamen. NATHAN or SAMUEL Peters. Which one is he? I have absolutely no bloody idea. But it’s one of those two, probably. A darker looking fella is looking on in horror at him being knifed. There’s a dude aboard the boat with a book of some type? Nothing else is going on in the scene really… Okay so I presume I’m supposed to know 3 more fates by this point… here are the ones unblurred according to the sketches. POSSIBLE - Asian looking dude being held up by the Formosa Royalty people? POSSIBLE - Danish Lars Linde getting knifed by one of the Peters brothers POSSIBLE - 3rd Mate Martin Perrot (but don’t think we’ve seen his end?) POSSIBLE - The dude in the back of the photo who got pulled up by the beast… he’s gotta be a unique job, no? POSSIBLE - Two ladies on the ship, but of course I don’t think we know their fates POSSIBLE - Knowing the identity of the living Peters brother but… what’s his fate? I’m perplexed… I think the turban dude def Persian but it says I shouldn’t know his identity yet? Plus I think the dude next to the Danish dude is from Sierra Leona since he’s the only dark looking one amongst the Seamen. Upon further review of scene 1/8, it appears Linde was CLUBBED, not knifed. In the 2/8 scene, the Asian dude appears eating, the mate/steward attend to the clubbed Linde who dies, 3/8 we see the dude got strangled to death beneath the ship, 4/8 we see the dude get his head blown off in the explosion, in 5/8 we see the 3rd mate steward get crushed, two midshipmen(?) Dancing on the stairs, in 6/8 we get the dude get exploded… LMAO WE DID IT JUST BE GUESSING THE DUDE WHO GOT EXPLODED WAS A MIDSHIPMEN!!!! LESSGO BABY!!!!!! THAT’S WHAT I CALL ELITE GUESSWORK 7th Fate - Peter Milroy, Midshipman, was blasted by an explosion 8th Fate - Lars Linde, Seaman, was clubbed by Nathan Peters (Seaman) (good job me) 9th Fate - Omid Gul, Topman, fell overboard to his death. The dude who throws the explosion in 6/8 is also 100% a midshipmen, we see Maba freaked out, another top tier mate with a bunch of guns, and another mate behind him. We also find Omid calling to his death undoubtedly. 7/8 still contains the dude getting grabbed by the beast and I dunno whether to qualify that as thrown overboard or strangled or torn apart or drowned… WHO IS HE??? Yo I think I actually found a new body on the ship… YES! I was thinking I was running out of info with the scenes given but it appears as though I’ve found one in “Escape, 6/6” In the 6/6th scene of “THE ESCAPE”, we have Hoscut attending to a boy, who Hoscut calls “son”.. the boy responds: “Tell Pete’s mother I tried my best to pull him back which means that Pete DIED.” Hoscut then calls out to “Brennan!, Bring the surgeon’s kit”. I have to imagine the boy bleeding out may be the First Mate’s Steward given how dear he is to him? How’d he die? I can’t say just yet… for now, I’ll put “SPEARED”…. Going through the passengers list. “Pete” must refer to “Peter Milroy” who was the one blasted in the explosion. We already figured out his fate. So the one throwing the powder must be another one of these Midshipmen potentially. OR a Steward. How he died, still not 100% sure. “Brennan” could be the dude with the gun from earlier? Who confronts the captain? I have no idea. Let’s just keep things moving for right now… In the 5/6th scene of “THE ESCAPE”, we see a dude get freaking clubbed and OH! The boy from earlier appears to have been knifed in the back. Dunno by who yet… the gunner bro from earlier appears to be straight up clubbing some dude. Probably a mate? In the 4/6th scene of “THE ESCAPE”, holy crap we’ve got a mate literally BLOWING THE FACE OFF one of the mates… it seems pretty clear that one of these two dudes put the knife in the kid who later died while being held by Hoscut… meanwhile above the ship we have the Captain distraught, and the open shirt bald dude who gets clubbed by Witterell seemingly… saving or pushing another dude overboard? There’s a lot going on here. In the 3/6th scene of “THE ESCAPE”, HOLY CRAP BRO GOT FREAKING BLOWN UP BY MISS!!! WHAT A LEGEND! I’m gonna presume for now and say he was shot by Emily Jackson. (Older lady). Meanwhile, another dude was seemingly shot by the Captain? He was telling them to “let them go” perhaps? Hoscut and the gunner are shook, Captain is firing off, MEANWHILE BELOW DECK WE SEE THE MATE BRO WHO GOT HIS HEAD SHOT OFF RUNNING AFTER THE YOUNG BOY WHO DIED WITH THE KNIFE!!! BIG CLUE! In the 2/6th scene of “THE ESCAPE”, there is A LOT going on. The dude who gets stabbed is undoubtedly named “Paul”. He is probably “Paul Moss, 1st’s Mate Steward”. Speared by bro who later got blown tf up by the lady. On the escape ship are the two ladies, bro rocking a tie and a proper vest, as well as a young boy who appears to be another steward. Captain has his gun in the air. Hoscut and gunner come running… beneath the ship… the young boy appears to be listening in on the dude who got his head blown off + a distraught mate + dude with top hat who seemingly lost an arm? In 1/6th scene of “THE ESCAPE”, there’s a ton of key details. The bro who lost his arm asks “Where is my Frenchman? He says “Verdammt!” This makes it fairly obvious that this dude is the Bosun. Alfred Klestil, from Austria, given the fact his mate is French. What exactly do we label him of dying from…. I have no idea. We now know that the Frenchman died after being torn apart by the beast. Figuring out who that is will be another issue. Looking at the sketch book… the game thinks I should figure out the following identities POSSIBLE - Asian looking dude (probably Chinese), Bald, don’t know his fate POSSIBLE - Gunner bro who is in a bunch of scenes in The Escape, gets clubbed by Witterell. Figuring out his identity is key. I imagine he’s a gunner since he’s in the firing squad but who knows… POSSIBLE - The Austrian Bosun dude… maybe… POSSIBLE - Paul Moss, the 1st Mate’s Steward but we gotta figure out who stabbed him POSSIBLE - Still don’t know the dude in the fancy vest who got thrown overboard (WAIT I JUST REALIZED HIS HAND IS ON THE FREAKING HELM HE’S GOTTA BE THE HELMSMAN!!!!!! (FINLEY DALTON????) (We’ll go back to that) LMAOOOO WE CALLED THE FRENCHMAN CUZ OF HIS ATTIRE THAT’S HILARIOUS! 10th Fate - Finley Dalton, Helmsman, fell overboard to his death. 11th Fate - Charles Miner, Bosun’s Mate, was torn apart by a terrible beast. 12th Fate - Henry Evans, Surgeon, is alive in Africa. (Figured this one out by the front page of the book and the office in Morocco) Okay even though we’ve only figured out 3 fates from that account, I’m willing to keep things moving to the next sequence with the cow skull cuz hey why not… OKAY NEW SEQUENCE In the 3/3rd scene of “A BITTER COLD”, we’ve got some key details. First of all, the first line of dialogue is asking a man to be taken to the Carpenter’s. “Get him wrapped” and “see to the last rites???”. The butcher then tells how to kill the cow… a boy named Charlie vomits. That absolutely must be “Charles Hershtik”, Midshipmen, from England. The butcher and man by the cow has to be “Emil O’Farrell”. Peter Milroy, who died, is there, and the boy remaining who was knifed I’m going to PRESUME is Thomas Lanke… just cuz that’s one of the few midshipmen names we have left and yea, could be wrong, we’ll come back to it. Aside from that, we have a couple Formosa royalty bros, Evans with his monkey, and a couple of dudes dragging a guy up to be taken to the Carpenter’s and… the dude who is grabbing one of the ladies arms keeled over a bed or table of some kind? In the 2/3rd scene of “A BITTER COLD”, we’ve got the 3rd Mate talking to Evans, the dude who died from the illness, the dude from earlier keeling over, some bros torn up over a dead body, and the Formosa royalty dudes… aight. In the 1/3rd scene of “A BITTER COLD”, we see one of the Indian brothers go to try and get his friend Syed to drink something… so I’m gonna guess it’s Solomon Syed succumbing to a tragic illness. I’m gonna presume the dude helping him is also Indian. Rajub/Akbar/Wasim? There’s also some dialogue by Russians on “stopping your cheating” while playing a card game. But which one it is… I’m not too sure about to be honest. Let’s go through all the possible solutions again… POSSIBLE - The Asian dude… HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW HIS NAME/FATE? POSSIBLE - The dude in the firing image knifed by the Captain. WHO IS HE? Lmao I just put that the two ladies were alive in Africa and ended up getting it correct 13th Fate - Emily Jackson, Passenger, is alive in Africa. 14th Fate - Miss Jane Bird, Passenger, is alive in Africa. 15th Fate - Solomon Syed, Seaman, succumbed to a tragic illness. Okay good lord after a TON of guess work we finally got through on some swapping of some names around… about damn time. I was getting a teensy bit frustrated 16th Fate - Alfred Klestil, Bosun, was torn apart by a terrible beast. 17th Fate - Leonid Volkov, Topman, was shot with a gun by Emily Jackson, Passenger. 18th Fate - Lewis Walker, Topman, was clubbed by Captain Robert Witterel. Now I think we can get away with a fair bit more experimentation as now we know who took out Paul, just need to find out two other fates. Okay we’re moving on to a new scene… because hey… In scene 3/3rd of “MURDER”, we see a dude get freaking BLASTED In scene 2/3d of “MURDER”, okay that’s one of the most badass scenes of the entire game… seeing so many folks on and the chaos of it all. There’s a LOT of nuggets here undoubtedly. In scene 1/3rd of “MURDER”, we got the 2nd mate seemingly murking the musician? Okay back after a short break since my brain was a bit fried from earlier.. think I’m ready to give everything a second look! I’m such a dummy. I had to fix Paul Moss’ death since I had him dying being speared.. goofy 19th Fate - Renfred Rajub, Seaman, succumbed to a tragic illness 20th Fate - Nunzio Pasqua, Passenger, was knifed by Edward Nichols (Second Mate) 21st Fate - Paul Moss, 1st Mate’s Steward, was killed with a sword by Leonid Volkov (Topman) That’s excellent, now I have confirmed who the 2nd mate is! Okay going back through… I just realized the 3 dudes in the boat got LAUNCHED in 7/8 DOOM WE FINALLY STUMBLED OUR WAY INTO SOME DAMN SOLUTIONS BABY! SHIRLEY! 22nd Fate - Christian Wolff, Gunner, was blasted by an explosion. 23rd Fate - Nathan Peters, Seaman, was drowned by a terrible beast. 24th Fate - George Shirley, Seaman, was blasted by an explosion. Now hopefully there’s another scenario to help us out with more clues… Alright if there’s a new scene I haven’t found it… let’s look at the possibles POSSIBLE - There’s a man next to Mob, bald, who I believe was shot by Edward Nichols. He kinda has a… bottle in his hand? In the image. I suspect he could be Chinese but who knows. POSSIBLE - The man who gets strangled to death by the beast. IS HE RUSSIAN? IS HE SOMETHING ELSE? WHAT IS HEEEEEEEEEEE He’s next to Indians in the photo POSSIBLE - Butcher we know is Emil O’Farrell, but no death yet. POSSIBLE - Who is the man holding onto Emily Jackson in the photo? POSSIBLE - Who is the man to the left of Leonid Volkov? POSSIBLE - Hok-Seng Lan was shot with a gun (executed) but by WHAT IS THE GUNMAN’S NAME? POSSIBLE - Bun-Lan Lim is the woman Formosa but what is her fate? POSSIBLE - I’m about 99% that Samuel Galligan, 2nd Mate’s Steward is who he is POSSIBLE - I’m about 99% on Martin Perrot as Third Mate is who he is based on Abigail POSSIBLE - I’m about 99% sure that Edward Nichols, 2nd Mate is who he is Okay we returned to the 8/8th doom scene and JUST SAW THE CHINESE LOOKING DUDE WHO APPEARS TO BE GETTING THROWN OVERBOARD! He has to be one of the 4 Based on the fact that on 6/6th escape the 1st mate yells; “BRENNAN” and its not an available name to pick from I assume… WAIT NVM BRENNAN IS LITERALLY A SHIPMAN ON THE NAME LIST HOW ON EARTH DID I NOT SEE THAT UNTIL NOW????? LMAOOOO I GOT 3 MORE BABY!!! LUCKY GUESS ON ONE OF ‘EM BUT I’LL TAKE IT! 25th Fate - Wei Lee, Topman, fell overboard to his death. 26th Fate - Henry Brennan, Seaman, was knifed by Captain Robert Witterel 27th Fate - John Davies, 4th Mate, was clubbed by Henry Brennan Alrightie baby we are back in business! That is the benefit of combing back over scenes I had previously completely missed. YOOO AFTER LISTENING TO THE AUDIO AGAIN ON THE MURDER, I FIGURED OUT SOME CLUTCH ONES BABY!!!!!! LESSGOOO!!! HALFWAY DONE! 28th Fate - Hok-Seng Lan, Passenger, was shot with a gun by Henry Brennan, Seaman 29th Fate - Olus Winter, Gunner’s Mate, was shot with a gun by John Davies, 4th Mate (this was largely a guess, for the longest time I thought he was the 4th mate) 30th Fate - Timothy Butement, Topman, was shot with a gun by Edward Nichols, 2nd Mate WE GOT ANOTHER ONE BOYS!!! JUST SOME TWEAKING HERE AND THERE! NO NEW SCENES! 31st Fate - Thomas Lanke, Midshipman, was knifed by Olus Winter (Gunner’s Mate) 32nd Fate - Davey James, 4th Mate’s Steward, is alive in Africa (guess cuz he was next to him) 33rd Fate - Abraham Akbar, Seaman, was crushed by a terrible beast. Okay it’s about damn time I found the new scene, that took WAY too freaking long In the 7/7th scene of “Soldiers of the Sea”, we got BLOODY GIGANTIC SPIDERS ON THE SHIP. Some bro gets… shot? I think? Don’t know by who. He’s probably a steward based on his attire.. just gonna guess the captain’s for right now. I see both Gunnar dudes in another room. The Bosun shooting the spider, some shirtless dude seemingly having shot the guy who died in this scene, the butcher pressed up with the surgeon, and the dude who I think is the surgeon’s mate as well In the 6/7th scene we see the butcher die… he got spiked of some type. Bunch of dudes taking care of the giant scary spider…. In the 5/7th scene with the spiders we see the dude get freaking burned to death… poor Charlie, man. In the 4/7th scene In the 3/7th scene In the 2/7th scene In the 1/7th scene is freaking sick… we’re on the bloody rigging! One of the poor Topspin got struck by lightning! I’m just gonna guess he’s one of the Chinese top men…. WOOO HOO WE GOT3 MORE OF THESE BAD BOYS DONE BABY! 34th Fate - Emil O’Farrell, Butcher, was spiked by a terrible beast. 35th Fate - Charles Hershtik, Midshipman, burned to death. 36th Fate - Huang Li, Topman, was electrocuted. Okay, we’re now in the 4th layer of the ship and have more scenes so let’s keep going! In scene 8/8th of Soldiers at Sea… oh nvm, not a totally new scene. Just a connector to the old ones. Oh damn I think we do have a new scene in the back of the 4th layer of the ship! Lessgo! In the 4/4th scene of “UNHOLY CAPTIVES”, we have hella dialogue. “Twenty years my steward and never a doubt on your sanity.” In the 3/4th scene of “UNHOLY CAPTIVES”, In the 2/4th scene of “UNHOLY CAPTIVES”, we finally know the chef given how much of an IDIOT he is to actually engage with the foreign beast.. In the 1/4th scene of “UNHOLY CAPTIVES”, Okay we have even more scenes to sort through… we’re getting tons of info Okay what a wild scene. Nichols getting SHOT by one of the Formosa! 37th Fate - William Wasim, Seaman, was crushed by a terrible beast. 38th Fate - Thomas Sefton, Cook, was struck dead by a beast’s tail. 39th Fate - Edward Nichols, 2nd Mate, was shot with a gun by Chioh Tan, Passenger. Okay I need to bounce back after resting for a bit in order to probably diagnose what the heck is going on here… Okay so we’re back! Testing out the spider sequence cuz yanno… there were A LOT of details. We have the black dude who is next to Linde in the photo getting killed. In 7/8, who is the white dude with no shirt firing?, in 6/8 I couldn’t get derive any unique detail… in 5/8 we have poor kid burning alive, in 3/8 it states… “it’s already done for Nick!”, what does that mean? YOOOO!!! WE FIANLLY BLOODY GOT I! 40th Fate - Samuel Galligan, 2nd Mate’s Steward, was knifed by It-Beng Sia, Passenger. 41st Fate - Jie Zhang, Topman, was strangled by a terrible beast. 42nd Fate - Marcus Gibbs, Carpenter’s Mate, was spiked by a terrible beast. Going back through Unholy Captives now… OH DAMN IM A GENIUS JUST CONNECTED THE DOT ON THE DUDE HELPING IN 4/4 WITH THE SURGEON IS THE SURGEON’S MATE! 43rd Fate - Nicholas Botterill, Topman, was speared by a terrible beast. 44th Fate - Alexander Booth, Seaman, was drowned by a terrible beast. 45th Fate - James Wallace, Surgeon’s Mate, was strangled by a terrible beast. I’m pretty sure the dude getting tied up in 4/4 is the Captain’s Steward, Swedish bro… given the way the captain speaks and he says: “era darar” and while I don’t know the language I feel like the symbols over the A makes it kinda sound like a Swedish language! Aside from that, I’m also convinced on 3/4 I figured out who the carpenter was given bro has a literal hammer in his hand! He’s the dude I kept picking for Sierra Leona! Ayyyy we got even more done! Just needed to tweak Ik-Beng Sa’s death to burned! 46th Fate - Chioh Tan, Passenger, was speared by a terrible beast. 47th Fate - Hamadou Diom, Seaman, was speared by a terrible beast. 48th Fate - It-Beng Sa, Passenger, burned to death. WOOHOO WE GOT EVEN MORE DONE BABY! 49th Fate - Li Hong, Topman, was speared by a terrible beast. 50th Fate - Patrick O’Hagan, Seaman, was speared by a terrible beast. 51st Fate - Alekei Toporov, Seaman, was drowned by a terrible beast. Oh hey we finally found another fresh scene in the 4th layer of the ship inside of a door by the barrels, this must be the very start of the game! YOOOOO THIS IS THE SCENE WHERE PETERS BROTHER DIES! CRUSHED BY FALLEN ROPES DEBRIS IN THE SHIP! I KNEW IT! Given the way he was talking to his fellow Seaman that it had to be this one… loose cargo! Wait nvm it says an unidentified stowaway was killed! 52nd Fate - Alarms Nikishin, Seaman, was drowned by a terrible beast. 53rd Fate - Samuel Peters, Seaman, was crushed by falling cargo. 54th Fate - Duncan McKay, Purser, was drowned by a terrible beast. Knew he was the purser since he was a total coward with the enemies on ship.. Okay we got the “bad” ending for the trophy, time to get the remaining few fates POSSIBLE - I’m 99% sure the Miss Formosa lady was “eaten” but we’ll see POSSIBLE - I’m 99% sure that’s John Naples who fell to his death but hey.. 55th Fate - Winston Smith, Carpenter, was speared by a terrible beast. 56th Fate - Zungi Sathi, Ship’s Steward, was shot with a gun by Charles Miner, Bosun’s Mate That’s odd that only two popped that time… hmmm… Okay woohoo!!! We did it!!! We got the final two. I needed a little bit of help for one of them which was dumb since I knew that John Naples hadn’t fallen down the stairs but rather had been attacked by the ship’s steward (duh), but due to the confusion over the Miss Formosa death I ended up looking up that you had to put killed with sword/torn apart. Fair enough. Given the fact I waited till the very end to wrap things up I’m quite chuffed with myself. 57th Fate - John Naples, Seaman, was killed with a sword by Filip Dahl, Captain’s Steward 58th Fate - Bun-Lan Lim, Passenger, was clawed by a terrible beast. Okay the monkey paw literally being there at the end is a lovely twist! In 5/5th of “THE BARGAIN” we see the monkey get shot along with the 3rd Mate and Captain’s Steward already dead… how did they die? In 4/5th of “THE BARGAIN”, we see the 3rd Mate die quite nobly I think… In 3/5th of “THE BARGAIN”, see the Captain straight up merked another mermaid… In 2/5th of “THE BARGAIN”, we see the Captain mark ANOTHER mermaid… In 1/5th of “THE BARGAIN”, we see Dahl burn to death when looking at the shell! Woohoo! We managed to solve the entire book! Now it’s time to get “Captain Did It” 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted January 10, 2023 Author Share Posted January 10, 2023 The Video Games I Would Create If I Had Talent (Part 1) I've decided to debut a new series on this thread after being utterly enamored by learning more about how Lucas Pope created Return of the Obra Dinn from this interview he did with the YouTube channel, Overlode. It kind of boggles my mind that a channel with consistently quality content has under 1,000 subscribers at the time that I write this but it's honestly a bit of a hidden gem in case you'd like to check it out. After hearing about how one man decided he'd innovate on a game that had never quite been made before he actually made it, I decided to do my own thinking and ruminating on games I've concocted in my head over the many years I've been enjoying video games. I have A LOT of ideas. But, as is the case for far too many dreamers, I lack the means, faculties, abilities, and desire to bear these ideas to fruition. I'm never going to be the head of a video game studio either. Thus I've reached the compromise of pouring my soul into these posts on the off whim that some creative mind reads this thread and decides to embark on the ambitious task of turning it into reality. STEAL THESE IDEAS. I'd love to play them. If your conscience guilts you, I'd be more than happy for you to hit me up so I can decide what trophies/achievements are in the game along with a thank you in the credits would be more than satisfactory. The Elevator Pitch: World Cup Format + Individual Tournament + Tokimeki Memorial + Pyre World Cup Portion Explained - The FIFA World Cup is one of the greatest enduring sports tournaments and events of our lifetimes. You don't have to be a sports fan to even get into it. Hell, I polled 100+ of my real life friends/family over the last few months building up to the tournament asking them who they'd think would win and all were happy to give me their selection even if they hadn't seen a lick of football over the last few years. It is a unique cultural phenomenon that grips entire nation's attention from whatever woes or turmoil may be rattling the country. I'm obviously being a bit hyperbolic (Iran playing doesn't wipe away what's going on in their country), but it's such a unique magnificent setting that let's geopolitics play out on the global stage and creates for tension and drama that would make Hollywood script writers blush. You see friendships between nations form out of thin air such as Mexico & South Korea from the 2018 World Cup. OR you could see utter contempt between nations form in the most unexpected fashion such as many Africans from the nation of Ghana loathing the South American side Uruguay due to one handball back in 2010. I'd like to take this format and turn it into a game. Make it 24 individuals from 24 different nations competing in the most-watched sports competition in that alternate universe. You could use real nations or fake nations. I'd probably opt for the latter as it'd offer more flexibility and creativity with individual character designs without stepping on the toes of people who could get offended with how their country is represented. This concept is a gold mine and I don't know how games haven't taken advantage of it. Individual Tournament - Obviously including entire nations worth of teams in a game would be a gargantuan task. Thus, I've decided to simplify the idea and make it one person, from one nation, representing on the biggest stage. It's half sports competition, half reality TV show. These individuals are the cream of the crop in their field. They're young, vibrant, eccentric, and naturally a little bit "off" in order to have made it this far under this amount of pressure in front of billions of eyeballs. You can make it 12 boys and 12 girls. You play as one of the boys. (or hell, play as one of the girls. It's your game, bud). Part of the competition will be managing the relationships with all of your fellow competitors. Despite being individualized, there will be 3 v. 3, 2 v. 2, and 1 v. 1 competitions and iterations of various sports. (Don't know if one mode itself would be enough to stand on its own. it COULD, depending on how deep the gameplay is. Think something like Rocket League? But it also couldn't which could mean different sports for different events which would make this a triathlon of sorts). What will make players fall in love with the game is interacting with your peers in this competition. You can form deep relationships and attachments with them such as if in a 3 v. 3 game one of your teammates feeds you a clutch pass and your win. This will be organically fed into the narrative and your bond with that peer will grow stronger. Naturally, you will also have rivalries with players that defeat you or if you defeat them. Some of your peers will be utter competitive monster freaks who will do everything in their power to get an edge. It's a feeding frenzy for players to get invested in and I literally can't stop thinking of different sorts of personalities and storylines you could create with this formula. Tokimeki Memorial - Here's my big twist on the game. MAKE A ROMANCE A CORE ELEMENT OF THE GAME. You're a boy, and though this is as high stakes as it can get for a competition, these games take place in a dystopian hedonistic society. As is natural for these games and competitions such as the Olympics, all of these young, virulently testosterone-filled individuals want to BANG. You can go on dates with any of the different girls. Some will be down right away to talk, interact, hang out, and do the dirty. Others will be more business, less pleasure. The player will decide who they're interested in, who they take a liking to, what chemistry works on and off the field, and how those relationships can be broken if you betray one gal in favor of another. I feel like romance is a criminally unexplored aspect of video game media outside of the typical "dating simulator". Make dating and romance apart of games with gameplay. Imagine the fun you two could have going for a victory dinner after the both of you win a clutch 2 v. 2 matchup. OR the despair and potential break-up if your significant other bests you in 1 v. 1 affair and your season comes to end as you fall short of your championship aspirations. Pyre - Make losing a natural part of the game. In any highly competitive sport, it is damn near impossible to win all the time. Most video games want you to win every boss battle or else it's game over and you just need to try again. Instead of that, make losing a core gameplay element. Tell the player at the start of the game that you aren't expected to win every matchup and feeling the weight of losing as opposed to automatically restarting adds to your personal "story" and creates for a dynamic experience as opposed to obliterating everyone. Do you know how some of your best moments in games like XCOM or Faster Than Light are when you personally create the narrative of the ups and downs of your crew on this journey to the final destination? It can be done the same here. You may have a rocky first season. You may finish with more losses than wins. But after some hard-fought training and cultivating key relationships, you may come back for a stronger sophomore showing and be an underdog in the playoff tournament that makes a surprise run to the semi-finals! All of a sudden, in your finale 3rd year, you're a fan favorite amongst the hundreds of millions viewing worldwide and finally reach the key praise championship as you sail off into the sunset with your arms around your best mate who you befriended over the course of the 3 years and your girlfriend who you promised to marry once the tournament was over! The Unfeasibility Of This Game - Listen, I'm not delusional. I know how impractical all of this is. My mind is breaking from imagining the amount of dialogue that would need to be written for all the plausible scenarios this game would have to account for. Accounting for all the different possible matchups and relationships between 24 competitors and how they would have increasing variables based on how randomized results play out. Multiply this over the course of a 3-year cycle and you're talking about a rabbit hole that not even Alice in Wonderland wants to go down. But I'd love even just a taste of it. Hell, make it just 1 season and I think it'd be genuinely plausible. It'd add to the stakes. But it'd almost be like a roguelite of sorts and you'd go again and again until you finally won the tournament or befriended a completely different set of friends. My mind is still racing with scenarios. You could have a natural best friend roommate (who you could befriend or make hate you depending on if you vibe with his flamboyant personality) who's into all the girls and gives you the rundown on them. You could include real-world scenarios where a player from one of the competiting countries has a global scandal and you could perhaps aid them in what direction they should or should not lean based on what the government they're representing is doing. You could create unique personalities for your player character by asking questions such as: "Do you believe one should be allowed to celebrate as one likes in a sport or are there limits?, "Is running up the score in a competition fair play or classless?, Are you willing to play dirty in order to win?". AHHHH!!! So many bloody ideas! Make all the boys and girls hot as hell and you'll have enough fan art to blot out the sun. you could have sports commentators / play-by-play analysts serve as the speakers during gameplay and deal with annoying ass Skip Bayless-like haters for your character like LeBron has to deal with. I'm not crazy for thinking this all sounds absolutely incredible, right? Right? 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted January 10, 2023 Share Posted January 10, 2023 On 1/9/2023 at 3:29 PM, realm722 said: Game: Return of the Obra Dinn Glad you got around to this one. I think it's my favorite puzzle game I've played in the past decade, and easily one of the most memorable. 15 hours ago, realm722 said: The Unfeasibility Of This Game - Listen, I'm not delusional. I know how impractical all of this is. My mind is breaking from imagining the amount of dialogue that would need to be written for all the plausible scenarios this game would have to account for. Accounting for all the different possible matchups and relationships between 24 competitors and how they would have increasing variables based on how randomized results play out. Multiply this over the course of a 3-year cycle and you're talking about a rabbit hole that not even Alice in Wonderland wants to go down. So, depending on how willing you are to compromise, I have an idea that could make this a lot more feasible than you think. Simply don't have dialogue. Some of the best, most immersive games I've played in recent years have had little to no talking. It could be like a farming sim, where you build friendships and rivalries either through personal experience on an in-game mechanic, such as a heart system. The time that would be spent on creating thousands of lines of dialogue could instead be spent on facial animations or emotes. I don't know about you, but I have a very easy time in forming my own likes and dislikes for a character based solely on their character portrait/model and their actions in a game. Take the bosses in Dark Souls, for example. A lot of them have no dialogue, but it doesn't stop me from hating their existence. Same for Harvest Moon games. While they DO have in-game dialogue, it's usually pretty limited, but that never stopped me from growing an irrational hatred towards Kai. You also brought up XCOM, which does this very thing. There are essentially two stories in XCOM: the cheesy, actual story, which does have dialogue, and the narrative you build for yourself based on the randomized soldiers you get. The game you seem to be describing is more like the latter. I'd argue that an XCOM game where you get soldiers with preset soldiers with preset dialogue would be a lot less impactful. (I know because that's what every non-XCOM game tries to do, completely missing the point.) Another thing you brought up is games that allow you to continue even when you lose (e.g. Pyre). XCOM also does this. Dark Souls kinda does, I guess. It's a stretch. At any rate, I think this is something that should be present in more games. One of the advantages video games have over other mediums is that alternate timelines can exist. If Mario reaches a bottomless pit, he can either jump over the pit and continue the level or fall into the pit and die. Sure, dying puts you back at a checkpoint, but the fact either scenario can happen at any point to any player makes it a lot more interesting than a book, TV show, or movie, where the event is already predetermined. The character will either live or die. Rereading or rewatching won't change that. That's unfortunately one of the reasons I've come to dislike in-game cutscenes, because they take that unknown away from the player. But someone who keeps reaching that pit and falling in before eventually overcoming it is still going to have a narrative experience that is wholly unique from someone who clears the pit on the first try, even if the rest of the level essentially plays out the same. Similarly, in a game like Obra Dinn, you and I probably approached things very differently, even through you could argue the game is more or less linear. In some ways, I think dialogue can hold a game back because it relies too much on traditional storytelling. Sometimes there is value in trusting the player to create their own story. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serrated-banner9 Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) On 1/10/2023 at 6:42 AM, realm722 said: The Video Games I Would Create If I Had Talent (Part 1) I've decided to debut a new series on this thread after being utterly enamored by learning more about how Lucas Pope created Return of the Obra Dinn from this interview he did with the YouTube channel, Overlode. It kind of boggles my mind that a channel with consistently quality content has under 1,000 subscribers at the time that I write this but it's honestly a bit of a hidden gem in case you'd like to check it out. After hearing about how one man decided he'd innovate on a game that had never quite been made before he actually made it, I decided to do my own thinking and ruminating on games I've concocted in my head over the many years I've been enjoying video games. I have A LOT of ideas. But, as is the case for far too many dreamers, I lack the means, faculties, abilities, and desire to bear these ideas to fruition. I'm never going to be the head of a video game studio either. Thus I've reached the compromise of pouring my soul into these posts on the off whim that some creative mind reads this thread and decides to embark on the ambitious task of turning it into reality. STEAL THESE IDEAS. I'd love to play them. If your conscience guilts you, I'd be more than happy for you to hit me up so I can decide what trophies/achievements are in the game along with a thank you in the credits would be more than satisfactory. The Elevator Pitch: World Cup Format + Individual Tournament + Tokimeki Memorial + Pyre World Cup Portion Explained - The FIFA World Cup is one of the greatest enduring sports tournaments and events of our lifetimes. You don't have to be a sports fan to even get into it. Hell, I polled 100+ of my real life friends/family over the last few months building up to the tournament asking them who they'd think would win and all were happy to give me their selection even if they hadn't seen a lick of football over the last few years. It is a unique cultural phenomenon that grips entire nation's attention from whatever woes or turmoil may be rattling the country. I'm obviously being a bit hyperbolic (Iran playing doesn't wipe away what's going on in their country), but it's such a unique magnificent setting that let's geopolitics play out on the global stage and creates for tension and drama that would make Hollywood script writers blush. You see friendships between nations form out of thin air such as Mexico & South Korea from the 2018 World Cup. OR you could see utter contempt between nations form in the most unexpected fashion such as many Africans from the nation of Ghana loathing the South American side Uruguay due to one handball back in 2010. I'd like to take this format and turn it into a game. Make it 24 individuals from 24 different nations competing in the most-watched sports competition in that alternate universe. You could use real nations or fake nations. I'd probably opt for the latter as it'd offer more flexibility and creativity with individual character designs without stepping on the toes of people who could get offended with how their country is represented. This concept is a gold mine and I don't know how games haven't taken advantage of it. Individual Tournament - Obviously including entire nations worth of teams in a game would be a gargantuan task. Thus, I've decided to simplify the idea and make it one person, from one nation, representing on the biggest stage. It's half sports competition, half reality TV show. These individuals are the cream of the crop in their field. They're young, vibrant, eccentric, and naturally a little bit "off" in order to have made it this far under this amount of pressure in front of billions of eyeballs. You can make it 12 boys and 12 girls. You play as one of the boys. (or hell, play as one of the girls. It's your game, bud). Part of the competition will be managing the relationships with all of your fellow competitors. Despite being individualized, there will be 3 v. 3, 2 v. 2, and 1 v. 1 competitions and iterations of various sports. (Don't know if one mode itself would be enough to stand on its own. it COULD, depending on how deep the gameplay is. Think something like Rocket League? But it also couldn't which could mean different sports for different events which would make this a triathlon of sorts). What will make players fall in love with the game is interacting with your peers in this competition. You can form deep relationships and attachments with them such as if in a 3 v. 3 game one of your teammates feeds you a clutch pass and your win. This will be organically fed into the narrative and your bond with that peer will grow stronger. Naturally, you will also have rivalries with players that defeat you or if you defeat them. Some of your peers will be utter competitive monster freaks who will do everything in their power to get an edge. It's a feeding frenzy for players to get invested in and I literally can't stop thinking of different sorts of personalities and storylines you could create with this formula. Tokimeki Memorial - Here's my big twist on the game. MAKE A ROMANCE A CORE ELEMENT OF THE GAME. You're a boy, and though this is as high stakes as it can get for a competition, these games take place in a dystopian hedonistic society. As is natural for these games and competitions such as the Olympics, all of these young, virulently testosterone-filled individuals want to BANG. You can go on dates with any of the different girls. Some will be down right away to talk, interact, hang out, and do the dirty. Others will be more business, less pleasure. The player will decide who they're interested in, who they take a liking to, what chemistry works on and off the field, and how those relationships can be broken if you betray one gal in favor of another. I feel like romance is a criminally unexplored aspect of video game media outside of the typical "dating simulator". Make dating and romance apart of games with gameplay. Imagine the fun you two could have going for a victory dinner after the both of you win a clutch 2 v. 2 matchup. OR the despair and potential break-up if your significant other bests you in 1 v. 1 affair and your season comes to end as you fall short of your championship aspirations. Pyre - Make losing a natural part of the game. In any highly competitive sport, it is damn near impossible to win all the time. Most video games want you to win every boss battle or else it's game over and you just need to try again. Instead of that, make losing a core gameplay element. Tell the player at the start of the game that you aren't expected to win every matchup and feeling the weight of losing as opposed to automatically restarting adds to your personal "story" and creates for a dynamic experience as opposed to obliterating everyone. Do you know how some of your best moments in games like XCOM or Faster Than Light are when you personally create the narrative of the ups and downs of your crew on this journey to the final destination? It can be done the same here. You may have a rocky first season. You may finish with more losses than wins. But after some hard-fought training and cultivating key relationships, you may come back for a stronger sophomore showing and be an underdog in the playoff tournament that makes a surprise run to the semi-finals! All of a sudden, in your finale 3rd year, you're a fan favorite amongst the hundreds of millions viewing worldwide and finally reach the key praise championship as you sail off into the sunset with your arms around your best mate who you befriended over the course of the 3 years and your girlfriend who you promised to marry once the tournament was over! The Unfeasibility Of This Game - Listen, I'm not delusional. I know how impractical all of this is. My mind is breaking from imagining the amount of dialogue that would need to be written for all the plausible scenarios this game would have to account for. Accounting for all the different possible matchups and relationships between 24 competitors and how they would have increasing variables based on how randomized results play out. Multiply this over the course of a 3-year cycle and you're talking about a rabbit hole that not even Alice in Wonderland wants to go down. But I'd love even just a taste of it. Hell, make it just 1 season and I think it'd be genuinely plausible. It'd add to the stakes. But it'd almost be like a roguelite of sorts and you'd go again and again until you finally won the tournament or befriended a completely different set of friends. My mind is still racing with scenarios. You could have a natural best friend roommate (who you could befriend or make hate you depending on if you vibe with his flamboyant personality) who's into all the girls and gives you the rundown on them. You could include real-world scenarios where a player from one of the competiting countries has a global scandal and you could perhaps aid them in what direction they should or should not lean based on what the government they're representing is doing. You could create unique personalities for your player character by asking questions such as: "Do you believe one should be allowed to celebrate as one likes in a sport or are there limits?, "Is running up the score in a competition fair play or classless?, Are you willing to play dirty in order to win?". AHHHH!!! So many bloody ideas! Make all the boys and girls hot as hell and you'll have enough fan art to blot out the sun. you could have sports commentators / play-by-play analysts serve as the speakers during gameplay and deal with annoying ass Skip Bayless-like haters for your character like LeBron has to deal with. I'm not crazy for thinking this all sounds absolutely incredible, right? Right? Holy heck, i want this made. i would buy this. On 1/10/2023 at 6:42 AM, realm722 said: I've decided to debut a new series on this thread after being utterly enamored by learning more about how Lucas Pope created Return of the Obra Dinn from this interview he did with the YouTube channel, Overlode. It kind of boggles my mind that a channel with consistently quality content has under 1,000 subscribers at the time that I write this but it's honestly a bit of a hidden gem in case you'd like to check it out. After hearing about how one man decided he'd innovate on a game that had never quite been made before he actually made it, I decided to do my own thinking and ruminating on games I've concocted in my head over the many years I've been enjoying video games. I have A LOT of ideas. But, as is the case for far too many dreamers, I lack the means, faculties, abilities, and desire to bear these ideas to fruition. I'm never going to be the head of a video game studio either. Thus I've reached the compromise of pouring my soul into these posts on the off whim that some creative mind reads this thread and decides to embark on the ambitious task of turning it into reality. STEAL THESE IDEAS. I'd love to play them. If your conscience guilts you, I'd be more than happy for you to hit me up so I can decide what trophies/achievements are in the game along with a thank you in the credits would be more than satisfactory. Lucas pope? you mean the guy who did Paper's please? that one is on the "play when you turn 18 pile" EDIT: WAIT he did the Republia times as well? man that game looks cool, shame it's browser only. i guess i have the westport independent which is probably the best alternative but still.... ah what the heck i am going to get it installed tonight Edited January 11, 2023 by serrated-banner9 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted January 12, 2023 Author Share Posted January 12, 2023 On 1/10/2023 at 5:31 PM, Cassylvania said: So, depending on how willing you are to compromise, I have an idea that could make this a lot more feasible than you think. Simply don't have dialogue. Some of the best, most immersive games I've played in recent years have had little to no talking. It could be like a farming sim, where you build friendships and rivalries either through personal experience on an in-game mechanic, such as a heart system. The time that would be spent on creating thousands of lines of dialogue could instead be spent on facial animations or emotes. I don't know about you, but I have a very easy time in forming my own likes and dislikes for a character based solely on their character portrait/model and their actions in a game. Take the bosses in Dark Souls, for example. A lot of them have no dialogue, but it doesn't stop me from hating their existence. Same for Harvest Moon games. While they DO have in-game dialogue, it's usually pretty limited, but that never stopped me from growing an irrational hatred towards Kai. That's a very reasonable compromise. Again, the idea for my game is so wildly out there that accounting for all the different scenarios and dynamics would be an incredibly daunting task. I've 100% enjoyed games for the same ways you've mentioned. A funny way I'd describe is for years I LOVED playing as the general managers in sports games (Madden, FIFA, MLB The Show, NBA2k, you name it) and even though players don't even speak or have dialog (at least back during the days I played), you'd grow attached to prospects you personally drafted and brought up the ranks or find some diamond undrafted gem in the rough who you turn into a starter on your championship contender. Something similar could work. On 1/10/2023 at 5:31 PM, Cassylvania said: You also brought up XCOM, which does this very thing. There are essentially two stories in XCOM: the cheesy, actual story, which does have dialogue, and the narrative you build for yourself based on the randomized soldiers you get. The game you seem to be describing is more like the latter. I'd argue that an XCOM game where you get soldiers with preset soldiers with preset dialogue would be a lot less impactful. (I know because that's what every non-XCOM game tries to do, completely missing the point.) Now you're kinda making me want to try out XCOM but that's 100-hour sinkhole I can't even let myself risk falling into ?. I'd have to see the game to know but yes and no? I think what you're saying makes complete sense. But what I'd like in my game is keeping the cast relatively small (okay 24 characters is A LOT of characters but games like Danganronpa, Ai Sominum Files, Zero Escape, etc... have done it with 9-13) and REALLY flesh them out. I don't think you'd find them "preset" if you knew that you were personally selecting from the buffet of characters available and you personally chose which 5-6 you decided to get really attached to and which ones you make your sworn enemy. Where I'd counteract your concept is how I felt when playing the first Valkyria Chronicles. I honestly enjoyed some of the quirkiness of some of the lesser-known characters... but the cast and team was SO BIG and with nothing like social links/events to really get to know them (such as in Persona 5), I could only get SO attached and drifted towards the characters that actually got shine during the story. Plus, Belgian Waffle Girl wins World War 2 by herself made befriending the rest kind of obsolete. On 1/10/2023 at 5:31 PM, Cassylvania said: That's unfortunately one of the reasons I've come to dislike in-game cutscenes, because they take that unknown away from the player. But someone who keeps reaching that pit and falling in before eventually overcoming it is still going to have a narrative experience that is wholly unique from someone who clears the pit on the first try, even if the rest of the level essentially plays out the same. Similarly, in a game like Obra Dinn, you and I probably approached things very differently, even through you could argue the game is more or less linear. Ooooh I'm kinda mixed on this! I've seen a growing increase in some people who feel similarly to the way you do. The best thing about video games is we're in control of them! A cutscene is taking that away so we can see what the developers want us to see. I get why this could be unappealing. But I think if the story/dialogue of a game is well done, I will view cutscenes as a reward for my having played well and gotten to this point rather than a side effect? All I know is that for games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Dragon Quest 11, whenever I triggered a cutscene it wasn't: "welp time to tune out" it was "I can't wait to see what these characters do now." BUT I have played games where it is the case of the former (cough Stick it to the Man!, Lost in Random cough) I like your points though! I think your version is 100% the more plausible to get created by a small indie as that amount of dialogue is so intimidating and honestly, the reason why we don't see MORE branching stories (outside of like David Cage), is that whenever you do that, you're fracturing your player audience. Oh you beat the boss? 70% of people will see this scene. Oh you lost to the boss? 30% will see this scene. and if you want those consequences to be lasting, the fracturing only increases and you're dedicating more and more resources to portions of games huge swaths of your audience won't even view. Cage with Detroit: Become Human may have done it the best I've ever seen in a game and damn... c'mon video game industry, don't let Cage have that crown! 12 hours ago, serrated-banner9 said: Holy heck, i want this made. i would buy this. Lucas pope? you mean the guy who did Paper's please? that one is on the "play when you turn 18 pile" EDIT: WAIT he did the Republia times as well? man that game looks cool, shame it's browser only. i guess i have the westport independent which is probably the best alternative but still.... ah what the heck i am going to get it installed tonight Hahaha, thank you for the kind comment :D. Yes! Lucas Pope is freaking awesome. He even lives in Japan! It's nice to hear he just seems like a chill dude who enjoys making games and he sounds quite grounded for all the success he's had. I've personally found it helpful to keep track of the names of creators who make things I love as it allows me to catch up with them whenever they debut their latest project! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 17, 2023 Game: This War of Mine: The Little Ones Analysis: I bought the game while it was on sale for $2.99 back in early September 2021. It's time to get a bit serious... Why This War of Mine? The first time I had ever heard about this game was not when it became available for PS+ members back in 2017, nor when it was originally released all the way back in November of 2014. Rather, I first discovered it after it was announced that all the proceeds for purchases of the game would go to Ukrainian relief aid efforts following Russia's invasion in February 2022. The developers, 11 bit studios, are not a titan of the industry. They're based out of the capital of Poland. They dedicated a not-so-insignificant amount of money for a studio of their size to their neighbors in need and I found it noteworthy enough that I still remember it nearly a year later when I finally decided to purchase the game and platinum it. The reason why I decided to play it now of all times is because I've had a fairly cupcake start to 2023 and wanted to challenge myself. I also saw that the game ranked 18th out of 393 games on @DrBloodmoney's scientific rankings. That's above The Last of Us, Bloodborne, & Bioshock! I expected a very good product and despite the intimidating nature of learning the mechanics early on, I really do think the game nails the intended terror and fragility you'd expect through the lens of playing as civilians in a warzone. The Daytime Gameplay Loop - When you first start a new game, the very first thing you're going to want to do is go through your entire residence gathering as many materials as possible. There will likely be dirt piles that you'll have to painstakingly dig through with your bare hands with your various residents but due to how relatively quickly this day first day flies by, I really don't think construction of a shovel is necessary. The very first thing you're going to start working on is the basics. Beds, metal workshop, & a crude stove. Upgrade that crude strove as soon as possible as you'll want to be efficient on your water usage. It'll take a little while to get your facility up and running but you honestly hit the "mid-game" extremely early once you know what you're doing. You can upgrade the workbenches, make necessary tools, and just in general keep in maintenance the members of your team. Is someone tired? Let them sleep during the day. Unless they're "very hungry" there is no urgent need to feed them. If they're sad or depressed and you have the ability, speak amongst other residents to try and boost morale. Once you really start to get chugging along, you'll find yourself calling days earlier by clicking the O button and skipping ahead to the evening. Daytime is nice since there's no real risk or danger. Occasionally you'll have people show up at your doorstep needing aid (which you can help or not) as well as a trader who can really help you scoop up the 1-2 needs you're in desperate need of. I personally found my favorite character to be Marin as he's a handyman which means he consumes fewer resources for crafting than any other character in the game. This makes him very clutch given the number of nights you'll want to go scavenging for basic components/wood vs. trying to get pricier goods such as food, electric parts, weapon parts, etc.. The Nighttime Gameplay Loop - The night portion of the game is the runaway favorite for the aspect I most found enthralling in my time with the game. At your base, you must decide where people will sleep or if they'll be on guard (the latter being useful to avoid being raided and losing key gear such as food). Once you've done this, you always have the option to scavenge one of the many available areas (up to 20!) available in the game. Abandoned homes, supermarkets, hotels, military areas, hostile zones, etc... I only ever scavenged with one person in my entire 15 hours with the game and that was Marko due to his 15 backpack slots. Marko is a legend. Early on, you'll be searching out empty areas. These aren't too intimidating. You'll see movement highlighted in red but it'll be a mere rat. You can get a lot of goods early on with this method and scoop up particularly valuable items after crafting a lockpick or sawblade to access closed off rooms on your returning visit as you'll inevitably need to make multiple journies in order to reap the full fruits of a specific spot. Where the game gets particularly unnerving is when you venture into areas labeled as "Caution Advised" or "Danger" when viewing what's available in the area. There is combat in this game. War is happening. This is a survival game. I recommend viewing this tutorial before stupidly dying. It is vitally important to remember YOU ARE NOT A SUPERHERO. You can lose your life insanely quickly if you're not careful. You can get screwed over by RNG in a knife fight. It is incredible how nerve-wracking the game can become when you're creeping through a home trying to steal some valuable goods from some awful people and one of them spots you and you gotta zoom outta there like you're DeSean Jackson. Yet it is also amazing how satisfying an incredible trip can feel when you return home and got precisely the right equipment you needed in order to make this key upgrade here or offer this clutch bandage heal there. Portraying War From A Civilian's Perspective - By far the most common tagline you will say with this game anywhere you search it is: "This War of Mine game differs from most war-themed video games by focusing on the civilian experience of war rather than front line combat." This is extremely true. This is a survival game, not an FPS. Even when things are going well for you, they're not good. Your residents will virtually almost always be hungry. Everyone is sad almost all of the time. Children will bemoan their circumstances and miss school and playdates. Adults will miss their vices of the past. If something bad happens (someone gets ill, a raid happens the night prior), the group will feel that pain and morale will go down. When you finally do eat after being hungry, most adults will still starve for me. None of them will be all to happy with the meal. There's never joy, just relief, when your basic needs are met. This generally depressing tone pushes itself when you have to become a monster. You may turn away kids who need medication due to your own team member needing some. This hurts morale. Characters can become sad, depressed, or even broken. If characters become broken, you can no longer control them. The only thing they will do is sit and cry, essentially becoming a useless vessel gameplay-wise. You can try and console them with other members of the house, but they can only do so much. Whatever this character has been through is taking a toll on them and the road to redemption is bleak. If you don't help them enough, they'll leave the home or die if they're either ill/wounded and have no one to care for them. When you venture out at night, the reality of these circumstances stay with you. Stealing from decent people will cause a morale hit. Killing an innocent person even more so. Everyone is just trying to get by. Sometimes you have to become a monster to protect your own. It's easy for you to say when it works out for you, but if somebody steals your last meal when you're on the brink of starvation, will you be so understanding for their circumstances? Trophies Turn Me Into a Monster - While I've praised the game to great lengths up to this point... this is a trophy-hunting website. I am a trophy-hunting gamer. I am now going to list off a few of the horrific things I've done on the path to earning this platinum due to the developers. 1) On one playthrough, I purposefully led poor Marko into enemy fire during an evening to ensure he'd get wounded and shot at. Over the next several days, I then made him sleep on the floor while not treating his wounds until they were lethal. I finally patched him back up over the course of several days in order to unlock the "Patched up and ready to go" achievement. 2) I accepted an old man named Anton into my party and discovered he was "slightly sick". This former mathematician then proceeded to get starved and forced to sleep on the floor despite a perfectly acceptable bed being available to him. His illness slowly deteriorated until he was "terminally ill". I finally coughed up by hoard of medication and slowly nursed him back to being slightly sick in order to earn "Miraculous recovery". 3) I had a lovely young girl named Lydia staying at my residence along with her auntie Irina. Unfortunately, due to the requirements for the trophy "No more tears", I decided to take Irina out for an evening stroll out by the garage and have her murder a sick old man in cold blood. This infuriated his understandably devastated son and she was shot dead moments after the murder. Little Lydia was crushed by the news. But not crushed enough. She was merely depressed instead of being properly broken. I then took Marko out the following evening and murdered a defenseless old couple in their old home while looting it for all its worth. This actually allowed things to play out beautifully. Marko was absolutely crestfallen at his sin and was broken for his homicidal behavior. Lydia, knowing she was living with that savage was also broken. Thankfully, the house MVP, Zlata, known for her lifting spirit, cared for, spoke to, fed, and consoled both of these shattered individuals back to a reasonable state popping the "Back from the brink trophy". The remaining trophies in the game meant I didn't have to resort to such diabolical means but I hope I gave you just a window into what you may have to deal with if you want to earn a proper 100%. I ultimately earned the 5.53% rarity platinum in 5 days and 4 hours. Would I recommend This War of Mine: The Little Ones? I'd say yes, I do recommend it. It's a survival game that does a novel twist on the formula while presenting you with circumstances not too frequently explored in video games. It's a profoundly dreary tone and it should be given the setting it is taking place in. I have to give the game big props for making the loop so satisfying that I didn't mind starting playthrough after playthrough to focus on a new goal. I had my 20-day victory with a few goals in mind but largely used it just to get my feet wet. My "broken" focused playthroughs where I intentionally played like a monster to set up certain achievements. I then had my "kid-focused" playthrough meant on teaching the kid everything needed in order to earn "school of life" and "bond for life". Shoutout to Marin for being the MVP and teaching Sergei the ropes. Marko really did carry the whole game for me. I finally bumped the game up to "Medium" intensity and earned the "Make a stand" trophy by days 11-14 in order to finally have the platinum pop. Shoutout to Arica for holding down the fort every evening. This was a proper detour for what I normally play and there are even more story nuggets in it for those who love learning even more about the lore of the game apart from the stories you'll create on your own. Panda Score: 7.5 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.5 / 10 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted January 21, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 21, 2023 Game: John Wick Hex Analysis: I bought John Wick Hex when it was on sale for $3.99 this past late November 2022. This is my first <2% rarity plat since Ash of Gods in Sep. 2021! Why John Wick Hex? I'll be the very first to acknowledge that how I came about this game will likely be very unusual compared to many others. I have never seen a John Wick film. I enjoy Keanu Reeves. I've seen The Matrix, Johnny Mneomnic, The Devil's Advocate, The Whole Truth, The Replacements, & Knock Knock. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to seeing one of them. That being said, I am going to guess I am in the shockingly small minoirty that has played THIS game of all games without having seen a John Wick movie. Why the hell did I play it then? Mike Bithell. Bithell is a wonderful British man who I've grown to greatly appreciate on the Play, Watch, Listen podcast (also starring composer Austin Wintory, voice actor Troy Baker, & video game writer Alanah Pearce). They're a lovely bunch and while I've mentioned them on and off here in previous reviews, they've genuinely lead me to some outstanding experiences. I only ever basked in the greatness that was The Banner Saga series due to learning that Wintory composed it. I've played Bithell's first and latest releases (Thomas Was Alone & The Solitaire Conspiracy) and enjoyed both. Yet there was still a small hole in my catalog from his studio. (We'll ignore Volume for now I'm waiting for it to go on sale). That hole was John Wick Hex. Despite the rather daunting platinum rarity, I decided to dive in and boy was I surprised by how much I enjoyed it. But before we get to that, why has this game seen virtually zero discussion despite it coming from a dev who had an indie sensation back before the indie market dam broke? Why This Game Didn't Sell - One of the difficltuies of being an indie developer can be the expectations that come when you get your hands on a big name IP. Let's call this... Peaky Blinders syndrome. Take a look at the comment section on the John Wick Hex trailer with 300k+ views on IGN. As you can imagine, someone who's a fan of the action seen in the movies is going to be a bit heartbroken when instead of a breakneck pace action game they get...this...grid-focused...chance-based...amalgamation quick decision-making menues. I really do feel for Bithell Games. I can only imagine how psyched they were when they got the IP. Yet... the game's look, despite completely getting what they were going for (taking out whole rooms of dudes in a fancy, chaotic manner with this unique sorta system) completely fell flat with the majority of players. Less than 250 Steam Reviews is as plain an indicator as you can get. It's Jank, But I Enjoyed It - Thankfully for me, I'm not like the majority of players. I'm a weirdo. I'm the sorta freak who absolutely got hooked on this gameplay loop. Basically, there are 7 locations you will be tasked with exploring and clearing room after room of unending mob fodder. Each of these locations is broken up into 6 or 7 individual levels. Your goal is to get through the area without dying. Of course, as I was playing with the Baga Yaga milestones in mind, this will not be as easy as merely surviving. You'll start each lcoation with your custom hangun, but with only 30 bullets, you're eventually going to bail on it for an enemy's gun. The fun of the game is juggling all of the plausible actions with what's necessary at any given moment. Sometimes it'll be simple. There's a thug across the room with a 9MM that is going to shoot you in 1 second. Simply shoot him with your gun and take him out. Simple, right? That will be mere child's play compared to what you'll be juggling with in later levels. You'll be shooting off your shotgun and blowing up a guard with a SMG but also need to juggle taking down two melee bastards as they descend upon you. Quick! A gunman with a revolver is on the 2nd floor and is about to shoot you! Throw your gun at him stunning him for 2.9 seconds before you whittle down the health of the two bodybag melee guys in front of you. Oh no! Now there's a Carbine mobster baring down on you! Time to change stance and crouch so you're out of his line of favor. Dodge roll to a safer location. Stand back up. Refocus so you have actions in case another melee fool approaches. Scoop up that SMG from the guy you took out earlier and annihilate the remainder of the room with the rest of the magazine clip as you advance unscathed. Of course, you only finally accomplishd that after an hour and a half of failures and around 60-70 restarts or so. I'll be the first to admit this gameplay loop isn't for everyone. You have to love repetition. You have to be cool with restarting a level over and over again. You have to be willing to concede that each room has a certain level of randomness which means you're never able to perfectly plot out the absolute best path as it'll constantly be evolving. But once you really start to chew on the gameplay, I think you can have a ton of fun with it, especially when you're aiming for the various necessary milestones to achieve the Baba Yaga. Whenever a game has me itching to play it again immediately after I turn off the console is a huge sign of my enjoying it, and John Wick Hex absolutely hit those heights fo me. A Surprisingly Manageable Ultra Rare - Whenever I see a game with a <2% rarity platinum, I automatically think there must be some BS in here that makes it obtusely difficult or annoyingly challenging. John Wick Hex.... has absolutely none of that. Seriously guys, this game has no business being as rare as it is. This is a 7-9% rarity platinum wearing a <2% rarity plat trench coat. Let me explain why. 1) You do NOT have to get all the Baba Yaga requirements in one run. Special thank you to @JohzyDeMartin for mentioning it in his wonderful post. I'll admit I was an idiot and didn't realize this until the Bank level. This makes the game's plat on its own much easier than asking for all 4 objectives in one run. Essentially, you can separate a run and make it focused on gun accuracy / weapon types used, take as long as you need, and then dedicate a second run to speedrunning for the finish line and using zero bandages while not caring about either gun milestone as you've already earned that title. I personally didn't opt for this and always tried to push for all of them but what this meant is for the Alps & Lair levels, since I did 3/4 on my 1st run, all I had to worry about on the remaining run was using a wide enough variety of guns. I can't express how much easier you can make the game for yourself if you're willing to focus on these one at a time and dedicate a little extra time to doing 1-2 more runs. 2) The game is super generous with restarts. You can die as much as you like. There is no permadeath or life count limit. Once you clear a level, you're able to exit out if you so choose. I fully expected a harsher system and instead got this unebeliavbly forgiving one! 3) The challenge requirements themselves aren't that tough! The "game time taken" only counts the move in-game as Wick. Not the time in real life. This means that as long as you're progressing towards the exit of each level at a brisk pace and don't backtrack too harshly for guns, you'll virtually always make the time with ease. I got the time on my first run 5/7 times and the two that I didn't I was 1 and 14 seconds off. Gun accuracy isn't THAT hard. Avoid using guns with lots of bullets (SMG, Machine Pistol) and stick to Custom Hangun, MM9, & Shotgun and you'll be fine. Weapon variety is easy as long as you keep a mental journal of what guns you've used by the end of each level. By far the hardest requirements is clearing an entire section without using a bandaid. Some sections of the game are complete BS. I think the final level of the Garden and the 3rd Level of the Bank are downright idiotic when I was trying to beat them without using a bandaid but I was also trying to push hard for the adequate time so perhaps a more patient approach would have helped ease the burden I put on myself. Still, it's all very doable if you're persistent and I never once felt it was impossible but rather only a matter of time. I never even felt the need to consult a YouTube guide for tips/tricks since I was having so much fun experimenting on my own. I earned the 1.46% rarity platinum in 3 days and 6 hours. This makes me the 13th fastest achiever on the NA trophy list! Would I recommend John Wick Hex? Maybe. While I certainly enjoyed my time with the game, I'll acknowledge this is the precise sort of challenging title that will have me enamored but will be a put-off for many others. I was easily able to look over some of the stilted animations and less than impressive scale for such a precise, methodical experience. Here is where I'll also concede that I completely ignored the story. Sorry Mike, I skipped the cutscenes. I just wanted to get right back to the gameplay. The boss fights at the end of some sections also felt quite goofy just takedown spamming the boss and then filling them full of lead while they're on the ground. I felt like I was doing the Judo Chop out of Austin Powers. Shoutout to Wintory for the two best tracks in the entire game being Elysium and The Uncaged Bear. I think my favorite level was Elysium as I managed to hit all the Baba Yaga milestones on my first attempt! I hope I've managed to shine a light on the game for some who've never heard of it and would be happy to see a little bit more discusion surrounding it given how little info there is out there on it. Don't let the platinum rarity scare you! Signing off for now, hope y'all enjoy the weekend! (and go every team but Buffalo) Panda Score: 7.58 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 5.4 / 10 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted January 22, 2023 Share Posted January 22, 2023 Well, you beat me to that one. I also bought John Wick Hex on sale. Your review is about what I was expecting, which is why I was willing to pay the money, but also why I haven't started it yet. (And while I have seen the movie, I've only seen the first one and barely remember it.) Where's part 2 of games you would create? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted January 30, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 30, 2023 Game: Cris Tales Analysis: I bought Cris Tales while it was on sale for $9.99 towards the very end of December 2022. Buckle up as we've got the longest review of 2023 to strap in for. Why Cris Tales? I've never hidden the fact that my reasons for deciding to purchase and play a game can be a lot more obtuse and bizarre than the average player. MOST people will buy a game because 1) they think it looks fun and they think they'd have fun playing it, 2) it's received so much hype/praise that their curiosity is piqued and they decide to check it out, 3) they were able to obtain it very cheaply or for no cost at all and decide to take a flyer on it. Not me though. I only discovered Cris Tales after learning it was created by a Colombian video game studio, and given my desire to play games from many different countries, added it to my wishlist. This is to say that I did zero research on just what sort of game this was and merely trusted in it being a decent time given the 3/10 difficulty rating and 30-hour time commitment as stated on the magnificently put-together trophy guide by @eigen-space. I did NOT know this was a "love letter to classic JRPGs" as stated on their steam page. Please keep these facts in mind for the remainder of the review and how my perspective shifted the more I played. (SPOILERS FROM SCOPE OF THE WORLD & ONWARDS) A Glacial Beginning - Immediately what jumped out to me when I began playing Cris Tales is the art. Good lord, this game is GORGEOUS. You can view it in some of the snapshots included in this review but the vistas of the entire world when you're traversing different towns or dungeons is honestly fantastic. It's a bit open-world in a sense but you're always kept on one track given the way it's designed. I liked it? It was difficult to get lost with how straightforward many world layouts were. That being said, my adoration for the art quickly turned into "oh.... this is that sort of game" when I realized this was a turn-based game with some light real-time mechanics. Listen, some turn-based games are ridiculously highly rated for me. Even apart from the behemoths that are DQ11 & Persona 5, I've also enjoyed the likes of Ara Fell, Cosmic Star Heroine, & Ikenfell. In fact, Ikenfell is a magnificent comparison to this game. There are some real-time mechanics as you can time your attacks to get a second hit in or even defend/parry if you time your button press properly with the enemy's attack. Still, the game made me groan again when I realized that traversing the dungeons of the game would lead to combat via.... random battles. Oh, so this game said it was a love letter to classic JRPGs they really weren't kidding? I deeply disliked this for the first few hours. I felt like I kept getting interrupted when exploring. Couple this with the fact I hadn't really grown to appreciate some of the game's finer qualities, my first impression after 3 hours was: "this game feels very deeply antiquated and despite the fresh paint job, this is gonna be a laborious 30-hour platinum." Familiarity Breeds... An Affinity? - Every now and then I'll have a jarring revelation about myself and my relationship with video games when I'm playing something. Donut County made me realize I enjoy puzzle games as long as they're easy. Mirror's Edge Catalyst made me realize I enjoy attempting a repetitive difficult task over and over again over discovery. I think Cris Tales has caused me to have another epiphany. If I'm around a game long enough, I will inevitably trend towards liking it more than disliking it. I tend to dislike most new games upon first impression. It's the unknown that I fear. Once I've been immersed, gotten familiar with the characters, and know the formula the game is going for, I begin to relax and enjoy it for what it is. This happened to me with Cris Tales by the time I reached Neva Tulira. The game is very focused despite its initially daunting scope. You need to visit cathedrals in different towns. You visit those towns. Resolve the issue going on in town while exploring 1-2 dungeons and taking care of the handful of side quests. Fight a secondary-tier boss before the main boss fight of the town. Rinse & repeat. Once I know what the game is doing, I enjoy seeing the act play out before me. I get familiar with each of the character's personalities. I know what to expect when it comes to combat. Basically what I'm saying is if you locked me in a room with Tayyip Erdoğan and Jair Bolsonaro for a week I'd probably like them a little bit more then than I do currently. Wait, what? The Scope of the World - Let's talk a little bit about the various lands you'll be exploring. You'll start off in Narim which is Crisbell's (main protagonist girl) hometown. It's honestly incredibly small and you'll barely be able to explore much even when you return here given how tiny it is in scope. There's also Evergreen Forest which is incredibly straightforward but serves as a great example of the game letting you get your feet wet with it's first proper dungeon. St. Clarity is Cristopher's hometown (elemental mage) and I think it's probably my favorite visually of the bunch. It has this annoying feature where you can't walk forward in town and can't proceed due to the water rushing towards you blocking your progress that always make you wait 5-10 seconds. The sewers are probably the most complex the game ever gets traversal wise but even then it's not too tricky. Mt. Thysia is a slightly more complex version of Evergreen Forest and has a nifty boss fight at the very end. By then, you'll move on to the snow world of Neva Tulira. It has one of the biggest towns and you'll have to explore the Museum Storage & Rainbow Lake. I kinda disliked the museum but thoroughly enjoyed the straightforwardness of the latter. The Salt Mines were decent. Cinder is the lava town and the main place to check out here is Ceniza & The Forge. I enjoyed both. Before you realize it you'll be at the final hub world of Crystallis which is a bit annoying to navigate with the box/light mechanics that you'll need to move around but you only really need to get through the world once. This may be a bit of a shocker for an alleged JRPG but those are all the areas you'll be exploring. The Ruins for each of these lands are so minuscule that I don't feel justified in adding them to this list. I don't know if it's an indictment against the game or not to say this but by far the best thing that Cris Tales has going for it is how gorgeous it is. A true visual feast for the eyes. The Cast of Characters - It's about time we talk about some of the many faces of Cris Tales. Let's start with your party. Crisbell is a lovely young woman. She's an orphan, she does her best to help others and her friends, and she's precisely what you'd come to expect for a protagonist on a mission to save the world. She may be a bit bland for some people's tastes but I enjoyed it. Cristopher took me a little bit to warm up to. He's an elemental mage and I largely enjoyed him due to his insanely OP magic attack of "pressurized streams" that single-handedly won me 80% of the fights in my final few hours with the game. He's a goofball. I thought it was hilarious when he was trying to holla at a baddie in Neva Tulira for a date or gave a random rating scale in mid-conversation which is something I'd do in real life. Wilhelm is whatever. His attacks were pretty weak. The shocking twist that he's old as hell and may or may not be your..... dad? Maybe? I'm sorry, there's SO much dialogue in this game I forget. He helps Crisbell learn the ropes early on before peacing out of existence. JKR-721 is outstanding. He's not a human but a Witness (basically a robot). He converses awkwardly. I personally loved him since his "instant strikes" absolutely dominated the mid-game for me and led to plenty of fun button-mashing. Zaz is a quirky girl. She is the -1800 favorite in Vegas to be @Cassylvania's favorite character when they inevitably play the game. I like her. She's adorable and freaking knows it which someone makes it work even more? She adds wonderful comic relief and also has some of the best animations in the game during combat. With how lovable she is, I'm a bit stunned she isn't introduced sooner to the narrative. Kari Hudo is totally forgettable as she's added so late and the only reason she was ever in my party was to get the one trophy related to her. There's also another character, Adri, added in a recent additional content update that I never used and thus have no opinion on her. The Cast of Characters (Part 2) - Pictured in the snapshot above is Matias the frog. He's an essential character early in the game and guides Crisbell through learning the ropes of this daunting task she's embarking on. That being said... I really feel like one of the best subtle tricks the entire game does relates to him. So early on, Matias will literally speak up at every opportunity in his jolly tone and ask if you need to rest, save, etc... so forth. Subtly, this role will shift to Zaz as you're heading towards the endgame. I didn't quite pick up on it until the umpteenth time it happened. But then it all clicked when it's revealed that Matias is a monster and the final boss of the entire game seeking to end the world and everyone in it. LMAO. I was not expecting that. But once I thought about how the game quietly lowered his relevance as his plan was coming to fruition... I love the way they handled it. I don't even know if it was intentional, but it worked. Aside from that, you'll also have fan-favorite characters in each town. Narim is pretty vacant. St. Clarity has a cute bunch. You'll finally come face to face with the Time Empress and good lord man... this lady is hot. If you're into bodacious motherly authority figures talking to you in a disciplinary tone then join the freaking club. How have I not mentioned this until this point in the review? Good lord there's so many hot characters. You can literally kill me Rhallus and I won't be mad. The Volcano Sisters actually have a pretty fantastic character arc once you're able to get past that thigh action. There are even hot dudes like Enzo and Azufra who you get to see get annihilated by their dommy mommy's. I'm not sorry for this paragraph. I've probably made more people intrigued to buy the game from the last 10 sentences than anything else I've said in this entire review. Critiquing The Formula - For as much as I'd love to go on about the visual aspects of the game, there's a lot that holds Cris Tales back in being beloved by the many masses and I'd like to rattle off those issues here. 1) I found the unique core mechanic of the game to be wholeheartedly irrelevant. This, of course, relates to Cribsell's time manipulation powers. Your ability to get to the past and back to the present. It's amazing how I haven't mentioned it until now. It's because I didn't find it that important. It's relevant during the story in order to view the devastation of the town and how you can alternate its future by making decisions in the present but man... mechanically? For chests, it's pretty lame given how slow Matias moves. For combat, it's at best used for a temporal limit break or to revert an enemy into a younger form of itself but I found it all to be so superfluous. Unnecessary. I used it a lot during the early but by the mid/endgame I just focused on dealing damage with JKR-721 & Cristopher. 2) Crisbell is not able to deal enough damage. It is so lame how they did my girl. Why is her only means of attack with the sword? Why not give her one spell at least? She's resorted to being support speed/debuff character in the endgame just so I can give Cristopher more turns. If you didn't want her to deal damage and be mere support, don't even give her a melee sword attack in the first place. 3) You revisit the same areas way too freaking much. The game will have you revisiting areas towards the end to a disgusting degree. First to activate all ruins. Then to recruit one person from each town for the generations. Then go back to all those same areas again and explore the ruins. It got egregious by the end. 4) The game can slow to a crawl pace-wise. There's so much bloody dialogue. I skipped a fair amount as EVERYTHING was voice acted and if it's just some jabroni talking compared to a sexy mother superior I wasn't going to give it the time of day, sorry not sorry. Call it the Ni No Kuni Conundrum. 5) How did they not have an item that teleports you out of the dungeon? How can you allow this in a game with random battles? Why is the walk out of Crystallis after turning a generator off in a ruin SO DAMN SLOW? 6) The combat becomes mindlessly easy at the end. Seriously. Just attack with Zaz, pressurized steam with Cristopher (which is bizarrely BY FAR his strongest magic attack over fire/lightning, and impact strike with JKR-721 your way to victory. Haunted House of Trophies - I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about this elephant in the room. This game is a goddamn nightmare in terms of potential pitfalls when it comes to missable trophies. I, somehow, miraculously, avoided all of it. I think it was pure luck. Let's dive into why. 1) All side quests in town must be completed before finishing the town for the first time. If not, you'll miss out on "Learn from the past, act in the present, change the future" trophy. To the game's credit, they'll make it obvious when you reach the point of no-return and there's so few side quests and they're so straightforward this isn't too annoying. 2) The "Walking armory chest" trophy asks you to have all equipment in the game in your inventory at once. If you unknowingly sold a piece of equipment that you can't repurchase since you thought it was useless to your party by the endgame, you're outta luck. Play the whole game again. DON'T SELL EQUIPMENT, EVER. 3) "Rena armory". Good lord, this freaking trophy. I thought I screwed myself because of this thread. I did in fact upgrade everybody's women (Wilhelm, Cristopher, JKR-721, Crisbell, Zaz, & Kari Hudo) to Tier 5 and did not get it. I thought I had screwed myself. I completed the Coliseum during the endgame. (That takes an hour and a half to complete 30 rounds of combat what the hell developers). The trophy did not pop. I got to the weapon upgrade time synthesis screen, upgrade Adri, a DLC character's weapon to Tier 3 and for WHATEVER REASON the trophy decided to finally randomly pop. I ain't complaining. My heart would have sunk if it didn't. 4) The "loot aficionado" trophy asks you to open all 117 chests in the game. Some are missable as one dungeon can't be revisited and others require time hopping which cannot be done after Matias betrays you. Save yourself the stress unlike me. Use this guide for some help to ensure you don't miss any in towns.I feared I had missed one when I finished the ruins. In reality, I had totally missed the hidden one in Cinder in Jaru's House that's totally hidden and thankfully does not require time hopping. 5) "Capture all enemy souls with Kari Hudo". This used to be missable. Now it isn't. I can confirm you can run into plenty of salt deformities in the salt mines even after completing the side quest. 6) "Complete 500 parries". Get ready to grind 265 or so as it took me during my final hour with the game. For such a colorful and generally upbeat game, the trophies had no business being this stressful. I ultimately earned the 13.31% rarity platinum in 6 days and 9 hours. Would I recommend Cris Tales? Maybe? If you don't like turn-based RPGs, this game will not change your mind. Don't play it. If you enjoy turn-based RPGs, especially the leaner kind, I think there may be something here for you. I can't help but respect the game for the amount of love so evidently poured into it. How stunning it is to look at. The depth and curation put into character portraits for even some of the most inconsequential NPCs. Yet there are so many little things the game slips up on that I understand why it has "mixed" rated reviews on Steam and is generally critiqued as a disappointment amongst those who were so optimistic after gawking at how gorgeous it is. I really do need Cassy to play this. This is so up their alley that it's smacking me in the face. I ultimately would say I enjoyed my time with it and am glad to say I've finally played a game from a Colombian developer, but there's so much more that I believe that studio can do going forward. Give everyone in the art department a raise. Keep the hot moms. Try some action gameplay and come back to me in 2025 with a banger of a soundtrack and you have a guaranteed hit that you can take to the bank. Toodles! Panda Score: 7.1 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.3 / 10 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted February 1, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 1, 2023 I Predict The Metacritic Scores For the Biggest Games Set to Release in 2023 Disclaimer Citation: This article idea is shamelessly stolen from the Overlode podcast episode released on January 20th, "The Best Games of 2023 (That Don't Exist Yet) There is a certain subsection of people that subscribe to the belief that anticipation is the highest form of pleasure. There's a whole lot of innuendo to unpack there that I'll leave for your imagination. Though there is some truth to it. It's much better to imagine the end product so often than it is to finally have it before you. It's why every young awful NFL or NBA or MLB team will always prop up a "young core" that they have and are excited for. I've seen it with the likes of Bulls fans getting giddy over Lauri Markkanen, Coby White, Wendell Carter Jr., & Zach Lavine. It often doesn't work out. Yet the dream and potential of what could be always keeps fans and admirers coming back year after year. What if this time... it does work? What if this year... the greatest game of All-Time, does release? We're all susceptible to hype. I had a legitimate thought: "What if Cybperunk2077 literally breaks gaming with how incredible it is." I'm thankful I never wrote that thought down on the internet. People would have pointed and laughed in hindsight. In this post, I'd like to endeavor on predicting the average critic review on Metacritic for each of the upcoming popular releases. As an example, Forspoken scored a 66 while that Dead Space remake has scored an 89. We're trying to predict the number on the left, not the right. Even as I've lambasted Metacritic as a median score rater for video games in the past, I think this could be a pretty hilarious post to reflect on several months from now so let's get on to the bloody list. Hogwarts Legacy (78) - I am not a Harry Potter nor have I ever been one. JK Rowling has never occupied any real estate in the landfill that is my mind except for when some people are complaining about her tweets on Twitter. The discourse on the game when the reviews drop is going to either be 1) reviewers making their stance blatantly clear, 2) people side-stepping it to just talk about the game as the team that actually poured their heart and soul into the project deserve to have their work properly reviewed. I subscribe to the latter stance personally. Ultimately, I think it's going to be a fine open-world game that piques the curiosity of some and definitely scratches that itch for the diehard fans. For players who are already used to big elaborate games, once the sheen of the unique setting wears off I expect Hogwarts to suffer from A LOT of bloat/repetitive missions as it'd be incredibly stunning if the developers (Avalance Software) DIDN'T fall into this trap. Think about how difficult is it to create a great open-world game. Now imagining a studio in their 1st attempt not falling into the same trappings as damn near every other one. Still, I imagine it's novelty setting will allow it to retain a relatively decent rating in the grand scheme of things. Atomic Heart (71) - This is the game that BURST onto the scene with its distinct trailer from several years ago. It's from a Russian developer. If you haven't kept track about the game... it has received a lot of BAD publicity that has me strongly leaning towards being a disappointment. An article came out on intense crunch and generally being an unpleasant place to work. They've been accused of harvesting data for the Russian regime. Some of the gameplay footage has been fairly underwhelming... I suspect it ultimately gets the denunciation of having more style over substance. Still, I think the freaky art style and enemies will appeal to the heart's of some and a handful will offer some raving reviews for the game simply being different from so many others out there. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (81) - I am a big believer in looking towards someone's past to be an indicator of how they'll perform in the future. With that line of thinking in mind, I have complete faith that the Japanese developers over at Team Ninja will bounce back with another strong title after the slightly middling effort that was Strangers of Paradise. They're the creators behind the Nioh games which have both reviewed sensationally well for falling into the Souls formula. I think that not being bound to Final Fantasy will aid them and they'll release a damn solid title that will appear on the lower end of numerous Top 10's come everybody's Games of the Year for 2023 lists in December. Crime Boss: Rockay City (58) - Good lord is this an absolute lock to flop. Its peak will be everybody mentioning how it got featured at The Game Awards 2022 and that's about it. This seems like the classic big-budget game that went to all the voice actors and marketing without actually investing in the gameplay. It'll 10000% get dunked on by Dunkey when it releases. It'll get torn about by most reviewers that decide to give it the time of day. If this somehow scores above an 80, I'll.... eat a sandwich. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (86) - Am I crazy for being so bullish on this game? Again, I subscribe to the belief that you need to look at a studio's track record to see whether or not they're worthy of your trust. The folks over at Respawn Entertainment took what they learned from Titanfall and managed to make Titanfall 2! A game whose praises I literally hear sung to this day despite the fact it released back in 2016! Fallen Order was widely regarded as baby's dark souls and I really think they're just going to elevate the game across the board with a sequel and get plenty of Top 5 GOTY nominations come the end of 2023. Perhaps the only thing that has me hesitant is a potential bug fest as the game has been delayed and typically that's a sign that the game is still in a chaotic state. Redfall (77) - I have never played a game by Arkane Studio. But what I DO know is that their games typically review amazingly with critics even if players don't feel likewise. (See: Deathloop). That being said, I can't help but feel Redfall seems to be a departure from the immersive sim genre that has made Arkane the studio that it is today. I really did not care for the cringy over-done dialogue found in their release trailer and even if I think this will be on the large a competent product, it's not going to be what fans (even critics) of the studio have come to expect. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (93) - You know the rules at this point. This is the brand-new Zelda / Mario game. That means critics don't even have to sweat what rating they're going to give the game. They already know it's going to be at minimum a 9.0, and they honestly just have to figure out what number to put after the decimal point. In all seriousness, for all the schtick I give the Nintendo babies, I will acknowledge that BotW looked pretty sick even if I haven't played it. It has an asinine 97 rating and it seems like lunacy that I'd predict the SEQUEL to that game which laid that foundation to somehow scorer. But man... is anyone else concerned that this game may actually fry the Nintendo Switch? How much bigger and more bombastic can you make the game before the Switch is melting in people's hands? I think the absolute BIGGEST reason critics aren't going to score the game a 10/10 is due to the inherent hardware limitations found on the console that will undeniably stifle some of the game's magic. Still, it's Zelda. There's no way in the world this flops and is hated. It'll be bigger. It'll be better in some regards. I can't wait for the 2-week Twitter discourse on weapon durability whether they decide to overhaul it or keep things exactly the same. I hope the Nintendo babies have a blast, sincerely. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (72) - This legitimately hurts my soul. I love Rocksteady Studios. They made one of the greatest video game trilogies of All-Time with the Batman: Arkham series. But I fear, in spite of what I've said about trusting in a studio's history in previous predictions, that Rocksteady officially jumps the shark and everybody is left with their mouth agape asking: "we waited 7 years... FOR THIS?" I'd love to be wrong. But they're making this a game that can be played in cooperative multiplayer. it's a shooter. They're going in such a radically different direction from the beautiful curation of the freeflow and story-focused Batman games to... the abrasive and obnoxious crew that is found in SS. There are going to be microtransactions because of course there is. I imagine some will find the fun in it. But for the vast majority of us, this likely spells a death sentence for a studio that we used to hold in such esteemed regard. Go ahead and check out Luke Stephens video speculating on the game in case you wanna see for even more reasons why I trend this way. Final Fantasy 16 (90) - Is this the most anticipated mainline Final Fantasy release in years? I've seen nothing but praise for the medieval setting and I'm 100% of the belief that Square Enix is going to return to form with some absolute brilliance after the rollercoaster ride that was the reception to Final Fantasy XV. They put Naoki Yoshida in charge as director and after all that dude has done for FF14, I don't blame everyone for being so excited to see him take over a single-player entry in the series. I fully expect it to live up to the hype and receive overwhelming praise for the darker and grittier tone its going for in a sea of fandom just about fed up and tired with the "Marvelization" of everything. Hollow Knight: Silksong (94) - If Silksong is disappointed, I'm going to be crestfallen for my bug brethren. Seriously. The cult fanbase that Team Cherry have cultivated over their humble release back in 2017 is mindboggling. I don't see how it fails. It's too big to fail. They did so much with the knight's moveset in the original that I'm almost scared about thinking how they've expanded upon it with Hornet's new abilities. It's going to be a thrill when it releases and there's going to be a goldmine rush to post as many secrets and easter eggs in the game to YouTube, Reddit, & Twitter like never before. Even as I'm not nearly as much of a diehard fan as many others, I truly hope it's an enormous success. I'd love to get around to playing it down the line as well as long as there's no obscene boss rush mode gauntlet that I need to resort to some nefarious tricks in order to avoid... Starfield (82) - I'm going to do something that nobody has done since Bethesda set their last shred of credibility aflame with the release of Fallout 76. I'm going to BELIEVE in Bethesda. That's right folks. I've gone off the deep end. Tie me up and put me in a straight jacket and throw me in the looney bin. I understand why people are skeptical about Starfield. Hell, anybody expecting it to be bugfree is smoking crack. But I simply cannot fathom Microsoft purchasing Bethesda for 7.5 BILLION DOLLARS and not ensuring that their next biggest release isn't at the very least a decent success. It doesn't have to be a homerun. It doesn't have to be Morrowind. It doesn't have to even be Fallout 3. It just needs to be... solid. Good. A decent return to form for a studio that people thought had finally cracked like Bioware. That's all they need to win back a great amount of goodwill. I think Starfield's novel space exploration will create some wonderful stomach butterflies for those who got on the No Man's Sky train and it'll savage itself to a respectable low 80's rating which while maybe not the score that Todd Howard dreamed of, it may be the one he deserves. Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (88) - Insomniac Games are a great studio. They make consistently good to great games in a timely manner and manage to do so in a manner that avoids crunch and treats its employees well. I have no reason to believe that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will be a deviation from that trend. I enjoyed the first game. It wasn't my favorite. It scored in the high 7's, and I think above all else, that may be the criticism that this game is hit the most with. Now that people have flung themselves about New York once and fairly recently, I could see the criticism of the game ultimately being that they didn't do enough to iterate on the original. Claims such as "they played it too safe" or "the Sony story-focused formula is tired" that we saw bubbling up with the likes of Horizon Forbidden West & GOW: Ragnarok this past 2022 Game of the Year Awards. Still, it won't ever be bad. It's Spider-Man! So there you have it! If I'm within 3 points of a score, I think I did pretty damn great. If I'm within 4-6 points, I think I did alright. If I'm 8+ points off, call me a fraud. BUH BYE! On 1/22/2023 at 4:59 AM, Cassylvania said: Where's part 2 of games you would create? 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted February 1, 2023 Share Posted February 1, 2023 On 1/30/2023 at 3:45 PM, realm722 said: Would I recommend Cris Tales? Maybe? If you don't like turn-based RPGs, this game will not change your mind. Don't play it. If you enjoy turn-based RPGs, especially the leaner kind, I think there may be something here for you. I can't help but respect the game for the amount of love so evidently poured into it. How stunning it is to look at. The depth and curation put into character portraits for even some of the most inconsequential NPCs. Yet there are so many little things the game slips up on that I understand why it has "mixed" rated reviews on Steam and is generally critiqued as a disappointment amongst those who were so optimistic after gawking at how gorgeous it is. I really do need Cassy to play this. This is so up their alley that it's smacking me in the face. Fun fact: Cris Tales was my first PS5 game. I think I bought it the same day that I got my PS5. It's been middling reviews like yours that have kept it on my shelf. Actually reading through your review, though, I think I can get over those blemishes... I'm just going to want to make sure I don't miss any trophies because having to play through a game twice because I didn't talk to some NPC near the beginning of the game really sours my experience. I'll bump it up on my backlog. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted February 2, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 2, 2023 Game: Pixel Gladiator Analysis: I bought Pixel Gladiator when it was on sale yesterday for $0.50, and boy was I blown away by the fun that can be had for a game I bought for under $1! Why Pixel Gladiator? The way I stumbled upon this little game is quite a happy accident. As is well known by this point, I try to always find a quick and easy 100% list to start off each new month. Last month was a bust in Stick It To The Man! This go-around, I realized my backlog was filled with either 100%'s I found way too tricky to try and complete in a timely manner (The Swindle, 10 Second Ninja X, Action Henk) OR had DLCs that I need to purchase that would prevent the 100% (Never Alone & Little Nightmares). I'm honestly stunned by how difficult it has become to find a proper, competent, well-respected 100%'s at this point that fill the role I'm really looking for. Are we running out of good 100%'s? Have I played all the good games? I eventually dug deep on the current sale and sorted for all titles under $3 and somehow found this little unique game... I looked up the trophies, they seemed doable, and the Xbox Achievements Guide said it'd take a few hours at most to complete which was precisely up my alley, so away I went! My Perfect 100% Game - I think what I love most about Pixel Gladiator is how marvelously it fits in the exact depiction of a game I desire to start off each month. This is a simple game with simple mechanics that has some fun repetition and a skill ceiling that isn't too tricky to master but will keep your mind occupied for a few hours. It's a tower defense game on an alien planet. You have a base to defend. You must kill monsters as they approach your base to earn money. With that money, you can buy walls, turrets, guns, extra health, rocket boots, drones, etc... which make you more capable of defending against the ever-increasing hordes of enemies that will descend upon your base. At the start, it took me a while to actually survive past Wave 5. I wasn't upgrading my base enough with the proper defenses and wasting money elsewhere. Eventually, I learned the formula. You want to upgrade one side of your walls with an advanced lower turret which will defend surprisingly well on its own as you're taking care of aliens on the other side. Get these walls to a respectable tier and defense, and save up until you get $7000 for the grenade launcher. Congratulations, you've won the game. The L2 mechanic on the grenade launcher breaks the game and trivializes virtually all difficulty. Outside of one very specific boss, you can encounter in Survival Mode (the indefinite campaign mode), you're talking about coasting your way past every other wave in the game. The only one that made that specific bizarre plasma circular boss difficult is because it can damage you halfway across the map with zero recourse as you take damage in this game by simply touching enemies or their bullets. Is the depth here especially deep? Absolutely not. Is the experience of learning the mechanics of the game and slowly putting together a strong run until everything crescendoes perfectly a blast? Yes. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game and kinda wish there was more depth to it as there's absolutely more meat on this bone if the developer had greater ambition! I mean, I can't be the only one who thinks a number of these enemy designs are badass, look at that flying terrorizing purple whale! The Trophy Experience - Given how little info there is out there on this game, I figured I'd do my part to document the journey I took to learn the mechanics. First, play Stage 1. I think this is perfect to teach you the basics of the game as most waves are a cakewalk and things really only truly ramp up at the end with the final boss. I highly recommend doubling your health as it allows you to tank some damage as otherwise, your guy is a bit flimsy. Then I'd honestly say focus on Survival Mode and cleaning up the majority of the trophies. The focus here should be doing whatever you can to survive until you can get $7k as again, the grenade launcher is the "I win" stage of the game. These waves are all random so you could get screwed by RNG as a warning. I got the hardest boss in the game twice on Wave 20 which denied me from completing the "full pockets" trophy and yet on my last attempt that boss never appeared and everything else the game threw at me was a joke. I can confirm that "magnate" is NO LONGER cumulative and you must have 50k all at once. In Survival Mode, this should be easy once you have a "broken" run and can't lose unless you're intentionally trying. Stage 2 contains the hardest trophy in the game. Here's me defeating the final boss of the stage. It's hard due to the minuscule real estate you have on 3 different platforms and not having the boots means you instantly die if you fall off. But there's an easy guide video teaching you the strategy most optimal for victory. Stage 3 despite seeming like it should be more difficult shouldn't offer much of an obstacle if you save it for the last trophy after learning all of the key mechanics. I ultimately earned the 14.67% rarity 100% completion in 1 day and 14 minutes, making me the 36th fastest achiever to date! Would I recommend Pixel Gladiator? Yes! Unless you absolutely loathe the tower defense genre, this is a nifty little title that I was so pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed as much as I did. I even managed to do a little bit of investigative journalism. As I'm obsessed with detailing where each studio/developer is from a game I complete, I couldn't help but notice the folks over at Flying Islands Team have barely any info on themselves online despite having a full steam page bundle of their games. I did further digging. I found their YouTube channel. A handful of comments underneath a few of their videos are in Russian. The 2nd listed language on their steam bundle page is Russian. I imagined they were probably Russian! Yet just to make sure, I innocently asked the question on their most recent game trailer, not even expecting a response. To my surprise, they actually replied! They're not from Russia! They're from Uzbekistan! How freaking cool is that? I can add Uzbekistan to the map of countries I've played a game from. I never thought that'd be possible. The things you learn by asking! I wish these folks success in all future endeavors and if they release another nifty game of theirs in their future for so cheap, I'll definitely look into scooping it up! Panda Score: 7.44 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.1 / 10 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 Dude, I love your goal of playing games from as many different countries as possible? Also I see you've got The Swindle in your backlog as well! It definitely seems like a bit of a tall order, but it's the same peeps who made Lair of the Clockwork God so I'm fully expecting a good (if not great) time. I guess we'll see who gets to it first? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum_Vice Posted February 4, 2023 Share Posted February 4, 2023 Can I play too? On 01/02/2023 at 1:24 PM, realm722 said: Hogwarts Legacy (78) 88 On 01/02/2023 at 1:24 PM, realm722 said: Crime Boss: Rockay City (58) 81 On 01/02/2023 at 1:24 PM, realm722 said: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (86) 77 On 01/02/2023 at 1:24 PM, realm722 said: Redfall (77) 86 On 01/02/2023 at 1:24 PM, realm722 said: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (72) 83 - I have faith! On 01/02/2023 at 1:24 PM, realm722 said: Starfield (82) - I'm going to do something that nobody has done since Bethesda set their last shred of credibility aflame with the release of Fallout 76. I'm going to BELIEVE in Bethesda. That's right folks. I've gone off the deep end. Tie me up and put me in a straight jacket and throw me in the looney bin. I understand why people are skeptical about Starfield. Hell, anybody expecting it to be bugfree is smoking crack. But I simply cannot fathom Microsoft purchasing Bethesda for 7.5 BILLION DOLLARS and not ensuring that their next biggest release isn't at the very least a decent success. It doesn't have to be a homerun. It doesn't have to be Morrowind. It doesn't have to even be Fallout 3. It just needs to be... solid 65 - I do not have faith! On 01/02/2023 at 1:24 PM, realm722 said: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (88) 88! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serrated-banner9 Posted February 7, 2023 Share Posted February 7, 2023 On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: I Predict The Metacritic Scores For the Biggest Games Set to Release in 2023 i want to play too On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Hogwarts Legacy (78) - 61 - i don't have faith On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Atomic Heart (71) - 85 On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (81) - 71 On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Crime Boss: Rockay City (58) - 80 - i have faith despite having never have heard about it lol On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (86) - 74 On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Redfall (77) - 70 On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (93) - 76 - Nintendo will mess up, watch them On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (72) - 63 On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Final Fantasy 16 (90) - 85 - GOTY Contender On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Hollow Knight: Silksong (94) - 91 - GOTY Contender if it doesn't get delayed again lol On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Starfield (82) - 79 On 2/1/2023 at 5:24 AM, realm722 said: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (88) - 84 - GOTY Contender i gonna add some more cause why not (And to start discussion) The Crew: Motorfest 67 - if this scores 75+ i will be amazed Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown 92 - GOTY Contender, I have faith! EA SPORTS U.F.C 24/FIFA 24 67 - it's ea what did you expect? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted February 11, 2023 Author Share Posted February 11, 2023 (edited) Game: Mulaka Analysis: I bought Mulaka when it was on sale for $1.99 back at the beginning of January 2023. This is a pleasant 10-hour romp indie adventure if you're willing! Why Mulaka? My quest for conquering the ambitious task of playing a game from every country continued with Mulaka. Despite having a population of over 126 million people, I had never stumbled into a game created by a Mexican studio. That fact has now changed. From the creative minds over at Lienzo (based in Chihuahua, Mexico), Mulaka is actually the studio's 2nd major release. The first one was Hunter's Legacy, and their 3rd, Azetch Forgotten Gods, was released in March of 2022. I'll admit that my expectations were fairly low after purchasing the game. It seems like none of their games have gotten much traction amongst the gaming circles I dabble in and despite the country's vast population, there are shockingly few video game studios to actually pick from if you'd like to try a game from there. It goes to show you how expectations are everything as I can say with no exaggeration that I was impressed by the competency in nearly every facet Mulaka has to offer! A Surprisingly Competent Combat/Movement System - As I don't look at gameplay videos for most games before I purchase them, I had my doubts about whether or not the moment-to-moment gameplay would be any good given how I had never heard of Mulaka in my life before actively searching out games from distinct countries. Boy, they did well here, man! You play as a Tarahumara shaman and damn can he move! I love how the game lets you sprint infinitely without limiting you in the form of a stamina bar. As you play, you'll gain different forms of animals that enhance your movement abilities. A bird power-up which will essentially serve as a double jump and allow you to glide past vast distances. A bear power-up that smashes huge rocks. A puma power-up that will allow you to scale huge vertical pillars. A snake power-up that aids in some puzzles and allows you to run on water. These upgrades are given at a gradual pace so the game's always throwing something new at you. As this is an action-adventure game and not a platformer though, the game would live or die if you enjoy its combat system. I say it's pretty good! At least a B! Some may find it a teensy bit "button-mashy", but the game has a number of combos you can do and while I never went out of my way to memorize them (just balancing light and heavy attacks whenever they felt right), I had a damn good time beating up most of the foes you'll come across. You also have a distinct vision ability by clicking R1 that allows you to view things not available to the naked eye (enemy health bar, some enemies in general, where the next key item is located). Boss fights are damn solid with 1-2 mechanics that you need to work out. I'd say my biggest complaint with the system is whatever they tried with incorporating the spear-throwing system should have been scrapped. You can see me struggle with it here in this footage. This is basically the only enemy in the game that you HAVE to knock down with a spear and it's awkward as your guy is immovable when he's aiming to throw which makes you a piñata if you haven't taken out every other enemy in the fighting arena yet. You also have a dodge capability by clicking O which feels nice. All in all, it's some solid action gameplay for an indie, and while not breaking any new ground, is just about the perfect sort of game I want to keep me occupied while listening to a podcast or YouTube video. A Game With Good Structure - Quite possibly the most underrated aspect of video games is their pacing and structure. I like it when a game has a good formula. When I know what to expect, and even if it's not revolutionary, if it's good, I'll enjoy it. In Mulaka, there are 7 levels you'll be exploring. In all 7, you will be given the task of finding 3 unique gem/crystals to unlock a giant door and progress to the boss of the section. Once you complete it, you move on to the next area. It's perfect! It's so simple, yet despite the relatively short length of the game, it offered such excellent start/stopping points for me. I just finished 2 worlds, I'll stop today, and get 2 more done tomorrow. All of these average around a similar length in time and it's so cozy once you get familiar with the rhythm. Actually finding the gems always has some variance to them. Perhaps you'll earn it after the end of a lengthy combat arena. OR maybe you'll need to solve another one of those water flow puzzles. Wow... there are A LOT of water flow puzzles in this game. Like, I swore, on 4 different occasions I thought: "this must be the last one there's no way they make one more complicated than this" and whaddya know, there'd be another new one on the next level. They're not hard. I found them kinda engaging surprisingly despite their simplicity? Don't listen to me on puzzles. I kinda enjoyed the ones in the lab sections of Marvel's Spider-Man. My Handful of Gripes - I recognize that I've talked about the game in a very praiseworthy fashion up until now. But I have to say that a lot of that comes from the fact I had low expectations. Mulaka is not one of my new favorite games of All-Time. It's a nice, novel, brisk experience that I want to talk positively about in part because I've seen next to no one talk about it in general. I could see someone entirely different play the game and find it to be a relatively empty adventure. They may be perplexed by why there was a need for the potion system in the game (aside from the healing) as aside from the grenades... do we really need that shield-up potion or rage one to boost damage? OR how about the length of time it requires to use a potion? I understand making it take some time to heal due to the active risk and desired challenge for healing while in combat (see: Dark Souls) but damn... does my man really have to do a WHOLE ASS dance jig EVERY time? Cutting 3-5 seconds on the animation would have been nice. Your mileage may vary on how much you enjoy the story/narrative elements of the game. I didn't mention them much until now as I'd be lying if I said it had me utterly engrossed. I enjoyed it. I always enjoy exploring unique settings/cultures in games. You can talk to every NPC you come across and they'll have something to say. Some held my attention more than others. I think this is a solid game that more people should play, but I'd be surprised if I met anyone who LOVED this game, yanno? The Trophy Experience - As the game has under 500 owners, it is my duty to document my experience. There are some aids on both PlayStationTrophies and XboxAchievements that will offer the majority of what you need. You are EXPECTED to return to past levels even after beating them. You'll need to do this to find all the ghosts and it's only possible to wrap everything up after you get the final snake upgrade in the 2nd to last level. While doing this, find random pots with korima that you didn't get on your first time through as you'll need a bunch to purchase all the upgrades. The game is generous with korima though so you'll never have the need to grind if you explore each level thoroughly which isn't too tricky. Kill a boss with the bear transformation (I did it on the first boss I faced after earning it, frog guy) and you'll have no other missable to worry about other than don't lose more than 8 lives on one playthrough. I personally only lost 3 in my entire time with the game. I will say that I was hyper-vigilant with healing and always did it if my bar was halfway gone as you can easily get knocked down to 1/4 by a boss with a heavy attack. I would say invest all of your korima early into the defense/soul upgrades so you can take hits without losing too much. By being careful, this really shouldn't offer too much of a hassle or headache. I earned the 18.14% rarity platinum in 4 days and 38 minutes. Would I recommend Mulaka? Yes! I'd like to see more people play this game. I think you should especially play it if you enjoy learning about different cultures from your own and video games are a pretty cool medium to make that possible. I think even if you don't come away particularly enjoying your time with it, I'd be surprised to hear someone say they hated it. There's just not much here to actively dislike. The movement is solid, the combat is sound, and you move along quickly enough to different levels and mechanics that I don't think it can "overstay its welcome". I'm chuffed to say I've checked another country off the list. I've got my eyes set on Argentina, Malaysia, & Peru next. But I got somewhere in mind before them first! Panda Score: 6.88 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.4 / 10 Edited February 11, 2023 by realm722 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted February 13, 2023 Author Share Posted February 13, 2023 (edited) Game: ICEY Analysis: I bought ICEY when it was on sale for $7.49 in mid-January 2023. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit underwhelmed by the end product. Why ICEY? I'd actually heard good things about ICEY on and off over the last few years as a fairly brisk game that has fun breaking the 4th wall as it responds to the player's actions. The reason why I decided to play it now of all times is 1) It finally went on sale again and I was able to pick it up and 2) I'm trying to line up my 9,000th trophy to be a game I suspect I'm going to greatly enjoy. Combine that with the fact ICEY would be my 3rd game from a Chinese developer which would qualify if for the "Country Counts" chart, I had enough incentive to finally give it a crack. A Breezy Combat System - ICEY is a 2D Action game which means the majority of time in combat you'll be smashing some combination of light (▢) and heavy (△) attacks. There are plenty of combos in the game that you can experiment with but I honestly didn't see much need to learn any of them with how easy the vast majority of the game is. Still, everything in the game feels quite good. It's fun to see how rapidly you can take down any entire enemy boss's health bar. The dash mechanic (R1) feels phenomenal and the fact the game allows you to dash infinitely without limitation makes traversal feel rapid. The game only ever really challenged me during the Ideon boss fight and that was largely because of his obnoxious laser attacks that would constantly stun ICEY. After 5-6 deaths, I finally took him down. Despite the game's lackluster challenge and general button-mashy tendencies, it feels good to play. If I had tried to push myself and play on a harder difficulty (which the games gives you zero incentive to do, trophy-wise at least), I could see the fun in actually learning enemy wind-ups so you can parry/counter them as opposed to taking a lot of damage on the chin and hit-trading. The Meta Humor - I.... did not enjoy the meta humor in ICEY. Ultimately, this is why I think I came away slightly disappointed in the game as opposed to being pleasantly surprised by it as many were back when the game first released in 2016. There are a multitude of reasons for this. One of the biggest ones being I couldn't help but think of The Stanely Parable while playing. I haven't played the game myself, but I have seen someone play it. The original game released back in 2013. Which means I can't help but get the sensation that some of the developers over at FantaBlade Network were undeniably inspired and added some of the game's formula to their own. It means that none of the humor... surprised me. Oh you went right instead of going left as the narrator wanted you to? Guess what, he's going to start getting a bit irritated with you! Purposefully drag-out sequences or disobey his instructions? He's going to start lashing out at you! There's even a segment where they swap out the game you're playing for "another" one if you don't decide to play along. (tSP did this with Minecraft & Portal) I think the most novel moment in the game is when the developer presents you with past builds of the game. One of the reasons I feel like the humor didn't land is the narrator's voice actor was also subpar. Lost in Random's was vastly superior. The English VA was some guy called Lee Hand who only has one other iMDB credit aside from this game. The game jokes about not having side quests, as well as poking fun at trophy hunters and the vapidness of the endeavor. It's cute. I wasn't bothered by it. I do think that any developer with this mindset should either 1) Just makes trophies part of the natural progression of the game through completion. OR 2) Add trophies that will incentivize mechanics/modes that players on their own may not explore. I've undoubtedly had tons of game experiences enhanced by trophies and so the myopic view: "all achievements are bad" is played out for me at this point. An Observation on Chinese Games - I have now platinumed 3 games from Chinese video game studios. My 1st was My Time at Portia, my 2nd was Neon Abyss, and ICEY is now my 3rd. While that's not a strikingly large sample size, I can't help but feel like I've noticed a trend amongst all three creative endeavors. Many of these studios have attempted an effort at a known formula (farming sim, roguelite, meta-humor game) and each have their own fair share of unique ideas that on their own are noteworthy and quite a creative twist on the genre. Yet... they all lack something. It's the soul factor. I'm not here saying that these studios are incapable of it whatsoever... but... it feels like an approach to game design that is so focused on numbers and spreadsheets that it loses the genuineness found in smaller, more focused projects. Perhaps I'm completely off base. It seems like the majority of players have enjoyed these games more than me and each have cultivated their own dedicated fanbase. Hell, the biggest Chinese video game of All-Time that I blew off has nearly 2 million followers on their video game subreddit. Clearly, people love it. I definitely want to play more games from the region as I can't help but have my curiosity piqued. If you'd like to find out more about the Chinese game development scene in general, I HIGHLY recommend NeverKnowsBest video on indie development over there. He covers some fascinating games that you've likely never heard of. Would I recommend ICEY? Maybe? I don't think you're missing out on much if you don't play the game but it's also an absolute breeze to play that for a fairly cupcake platinum, you could do much worse. There's a fantastic text walkthrough for the plat found on PlayStationTrophies that is so easy to follow for being so succinct I honestly think it's the only source you need if you want to earn all the trophies on your first playthrough. I'd be curious to know if someone who has never previously played The Stanley Parable felt about the game. Does the meta-humor come off a lot more fresh and cutting? OR does the lackluster VA still do too much damage to the overall message? I ultimately earned the 64.62% rarity platinum in 2 hours and 42 minutes. That's all from me. Eagles up 21-14 in Super Bowl LVII but I still believes in a hobbled Mahomes to comeback in the 2nd half. See y'all next time! Panda Score: 6.47 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.1 / 10 Edited February 13, 2023 by realm722 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted February 16, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 16, 2023 Game: Carto Analysis: I bought Carto when it was on sale for $9.99 earlier this month and I have some up-and-down opinions I'd like to share regarding it. Why Carto? I'm a very simple man. I see @Cassylvania rate a game highly. I buy it. I play it. I platinum it. But in all seriousness, aside from Cassy's glowing recommendation, I did a little bit of an investigation into the development team behind Carto (Sunhead Games) and discovered they're an up-and-coming indie studio out of Taiwan! I thought it was quite cool and it had never dawned on me that despite being a relatively small island, Taiwan has a population of over 23 million and has the infrastructure technology-wise that can make them a player in the video games medium. It's A Cute Game - There's no need to complicate this review. If you're into puzzle games and are seeking a generally upbeat and positive vibe with some adorable characters and animations, you'd struggle to do better than Carto. The game is quite precious in how it presents the struggles of our letter protagonist girl Carto and how she helps out a wide array of friends in her journey to find her grandmother again. I particularly love her cheeky thumbs-up whenever confirming something or a simple ":-)" dialogue bubble when responding to someone. The entire OST is soft on the ears and you'd have to have an ice pack for a heart to not at least be gently moved by the general pleasantness of the story and ambiance. WOW! Did you notice how I manage to describe this game's entire atmosphere without once using the word "wholesome"? I'm A Dumbass - Unfortunately, despite the game's general wonderfulness, I am a moron. I do not typically enjoy puzzle games. I have small brain. If I no kill I no understand. I need extremely simple puzzle games (Donut County) to keep my mind occupied or an enthralling mystery/sense of discovery that pushes me to my limits. Carto unfortunately offers neither of those. Despite the cutesy kid graphics, uhh.... YO, those puzzles kicked my ass for certain sections. I have to give the developers credit. The actual puzzle mechanics/core feature of the game is neat as hell. You change the entire layout of the world by flipping pieces around on a map and then experience that in real time in the game. You have to very often manipulate pieces in a certain way in order to progress the story and see the next event / acquire the necessary item. It is with much humiliation that I must confess I spent like 35 minutes not understanding what the tree branches puzzle in Chapter 3 wanted out of me. I wish that were the end of it. The game has such insanely simple mechanics but things only got worse for me later on in the game exploring the volcano and good lord... EVEN WITH A GUIDE, I had trouble orienting myself in the Iceberg world in order to get past the many obstacles and rocks the game lays before you. This is quite embarrassing given the child-like nature of the game and how I'd like to think of myself being at least decently competent when using the critical thinking faculty of my brain. Apparently not. Here I was, like a goddamn moron, getting totally disoriented in the underground level of Chapter 3 not realizing why I couldn't reach the end of the level until discovering the connection I needed to make which had denied me the ability I needed to access the path I needed to proceed. I feel bad since I should have been ooh'd and awe'd by the game and how it builds on its sleek mechanics and instead I just brainfarted and punted mentally on challenging myself. The Trophy Experience - There aren't any true missables during the game since there is a chapter select, but I recommend having PlatGet's guide to the plat along with a step-by-step guide of the game in case you get stuck at any point. None of these side objectives throughout the game should ever pose much trouble (except maybe getting out of the ice skating section in Chapter 9). This is an extremely short game. You'll be surprised by how quickly you can brisk through it and I managed to earn the 62.62% rarity platinum in 2 days and 2 hours (5 hours of actual play-time). It'll likely rise to 6-7 in the cases of those who don't have a baby brain and can figure out the puzzles for themselves. Would I recommend Carto? Maybe. If you're a fan of puzzle games, I think there's enough challenge here to keep you occupied that it won't be a simple walk in the park and you could actually find yourself pushed at times to learn the mechanics. If you're not really into puzzle games, you could go for the delightful atmosphere with a guide handy but your mileage will vary depending on your personality. This game was a real blow to the ego for me. Here I am, with 211 platinums to my name, along with nearly 350 ultra-rare trophies, and yet I let a kid's game kick my ass. I feel like Ted Danson in The Good Place after Jason of all people discovers the secret of his plans. I'm gonna need some time to recover from this and wash off the stain of humiliation and embarrassment. Hey, I heard there's a pretty cool card game that's totally not scary that was apparently a pretty big indie hit last year... maybe that'll help soothe my self-esteem. Ta ta! Panda Score: 6.2 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.9 / 10 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted February 21, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2023 Do Video Games Have To Be Fun? Disclaimer: Check out one of the greatest introductions to any video game character ever, Goro Majima in Yakuza 0 "If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie Fils-Aimé, 2017 A true philosopher of our time, Reggie's quote here has become a common crutch quote for gamers to utilize when lambasting a title that they, personally, deem not to be fun. There are a couple reason why this mantra is a little flawed (for one, Nintendo views itself as a toy company above all else) but I thought it'd be fun to engage in this little thought exercise on the whole. Why do I play video games? Why do you play video games? Video games are another form of entertainment just like TV, movies, reading, and so forth. The difference of course is that they're an interactive medium that allows you to influence the outcome of what lays before you. You can't change the author's final say in a book (unless it's a choose-your-own-adventure I guess) OR choose which characters in a movie the protagonist decides to get close to. You CAN do that stuff in a video game! (or at least in the GOOD games you can). So let's explore some of these themes. Why do other people play video games? 1) People enjoy a challenge. Ultra-rare trophy hunters can attest to this. There's nothing quite like the thrill of chasing down a big target. Some people love going up against other players in online competitions and besting others. OR it could be a battle of intellect and figuring out the intricacies of a game's systems and maximizing it for the best results (simulation, 4x genres). 2) People play games for "escapism". I violently disagree with this motive but I feel compelled to include it. I can't help but feel like it gets busted out when people don't want games tackling certain subjects/issues but it is a real thing for many players. I mean, Isekai is all you need to say. 3) People play games to relax. This is for your Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and The Sims crowd. Some people love checking in for an hour each evening and taking care of their dailies in their virtual worlds. I can respect it. While there are plenty of other reasons I can list here, I think these 3 facets cover the majority of what most people will fall into. Why do I play video games? Uhh... wow... ummm.... lemme think about that for a moment. I undoubtedly enjoy a challenge. I don't go looking for it in every single video game I play but if I find a game with some mechanics that I enjoy I can absolutely get down with beating my head against the wall until I get it right. I think back to Furi or Slay the Spire. I don't really play games for escapism. I don't really play games to "relax". I guess honestly what I'm looking for most of the time is cool experiences. It doesn't necessarily have to be fun, though it often is. I love it when a game responds to my actions and decisions and respects them. (Hades, Persona 5, Ash of Gods, The Banner Saga Trilogy). But the funny thing is 3/4 of those games aren't action-based combat. They're turn-based. I don't need high-throttle action all of the time. It doesn't even have to be challenging. It just needs to be... engaging? That's a dangerous statement. It's why cookie clickers and Vampire Survivors was so many people's GOTY for 2022 but seriously. I'm looking for unique experiences above all else. Does a unique experience HAVE to be fun? Not necessarily? Looking at my list of games (especially in the 7.00 category and up), I have a hard time finding any that I didn't actively enjoy most of my time with. Fun is of course, subjective. Some fun is found in lightning-fast reflexes with your thumbs and fingers to obtain certain outcomes (Risk of Rain 2, Rollerdrome). I had fun uncovering the mystery in The Forgotten City and slowly learning more and more about the world and characters in it. Return of the Obra Dinn has you unraveling a mystery and the fates of numerous people who've perished. These were all fun in their own way. But then there are games like Pathologic which come to mind for me. If you're unfamiliar, save yourself the struggle and go watch Hbomberguy's 2-hour video on it. In all his documentation of the game, with all the obtuse game systems and the general struggle to survive... it doesn't come across as fun. Yet it was a worthwhile experience. No matter how niche it is, however, few people actually want to endure that, I'm so glad that game exists. It may not be "fun" in the typical sense of the word but it's pushing the envelope and I want to see more of that. In conclusion, do video games have to be fun? No. While I think it's cool if developers want to make stories or systems that engage on that level and I have no doubt that there won't be a shortage of players who desire that type of game, I want to feel and experience new stuff. SOME of that new stuff may not always be fun, and I'm willing to accept that. The movie equivalent of this in my mind is a romantic drama from 2004 named Closer. When I saw the film a few years ago, I rated it a 6.8/10. I gave it that rating since I felt bad about myself afterward. It wasn't a fun movie. There's pain and suffering and relationship strife and I wasn't exactly eager to ever rewatch it again. Yet despite the movie's pedestrian rating... it has stuck with me. I still think about it from time to time. It wasn't "fun" but it was a worthwhile experience that I won't be forgetting anytime soon. I think there is a lane for games to carve out in that regard. It may take a minute for video games to get there but I think the more mature the medium gets we'll see more titles that fall into this special category. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted February 23, 2023 Author Share Posted February 23, 2023 My Latest Obsession: Indie Game Marketing & Chris Zukowski Chris Zukowski's Website: HowToMarketAGame Every now and then I will stumble down a YouTube rabbit hole that fascinates me and the latest one that has completely captivated me relates to video games. I am someone who will likely never make a video game. I don't possess the artistry or the programming prowess. I'm okay with that. But I'm still intrigued by those who decide to make that drastic lifestyle choice. These are creatives who very often are willing to quit their full-time job (whether at a current studio or not) and throw themselves into their creation. You can't create a better story that you hope to see succeed. Sadly, with the number of games released on Steam, many developers will be one-and-done despite their passion. What Zukowski is trying to do is offer an inside edge or common tips & tricks to help those trying to make it in the industry survive. There are so many to list off here that I'm just going to rattle off some of his content that I've already consumed. YouTube Videos Watched How To Market A Game on Steam 30 Minute Steam Page Makeovers Why are wishlists so important to indie devs? How to pick the right type of indie game to make What to Write So People Buy: Selling your Game Without Feeling Sleazy 2022 Year in Review Promo Articles On Blog Read: Pay Attention these Secretely Popular Sub-Genres What's the best day to release an indie game? Are Vampie Survivor-likes dead? The Median Indie Game does not earn a whole lot Six Types of Best Selling Games 6 Interesting Lessons from the Dome Keeper Launch Maybe Mixing Genres is a Bad Idea 10 Reasons You Should Stop Targeting Casual Gamers More evidence of which genres steam shoppers love to play Other Indie Developers Are Not Your Competition How Peglin Made $1,049,413 In 1 Week Of course, this man is quite literally teaching people how to market and advertise so I shouldn't be all that surprised that he's so affable and personable but seriously, I have learned so much by just reading a few of his articles. His main focus is of course the hub of indie games which is on Steam given the barriers that limit developers from easily publishing on any of the individual consoles but even via that route I have found some fascinating games that have been around long enough that they've seen a PS5 release, such as Webbed and Roundguard. This is me taking from a selfish perspective of just wanting to see more awesome indie games come to PlayStation so I can play them but it's fascinating seeing him offer a behind-the-scenes look with inside stories from these very developers. How the Peglin developer was originally intimidated by an indie with a similar hook/concept yet released anyway and teamed up with the other devs and it ended up soaring the game to ever bigger hits! I absolutely love his article on why indies shouldn't appeal to casuals. He conveys it in such an eloquent yet understandable manner that when you're down you realize how foolish the original notion even was, to begin with. AND as a bonus, he does it in a humorous manner! (Talking about hardcore gamers shadowbanning you on Reddit lmao) It is interesting to see some of the pushback people will give him on Twitter. One detail you'll see him consistently urge developers is that one of, if not the single biggest decision you make when deciding to make a game and determining whether or not it would be successful is the GENRE. It doesn't matter if you make the prettiest, most wonderful, most engaging, enthralling Match 3 game... they simply don't sell on Steam. The one that did had girls with big boobies in them and all the reviews complained about how there wasn't any sex in the game. Another virtually impossible genre is making a 2D platformer. Why? Because there's a gazillion of them. Nobody wants to buy them. You may cite the one example of Celeste but that's survivorship bias. The one out of a million that actually made it. It's not a trustworthy template to base your livelihood on. It's kinda like how every NBA fan who had a lengthy wing with good defense back in the mid-2010s thought their favorite prospect could developer into Kawhi Leonard. From Stanley Johnson to Justise Winslow. Believe me, I did it with Winslow. Don't base your possibility of success on an outlier. Genres with far fewer games (4x, simulation, survival, roguelites) have far higher probabilities given Steam shoppers love games with replayability and deep mechanics. I just wanted to pass my recent obsession along for others who are super into this niche crap. I gave him a follow on Twitter and plan to check his blog once a week since his articles are almost always insightful yet concise and bite-sized enough to be chewable. Hopefully, in the process, I learn about a few more indies that can eventually make their way to consoles and I can include them in some future reviews on here! Until next time... hey... we've got a banger indie on the docket to review! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted February 27, 2023 Author Share Posted February 27, 2023 Welp... there's one more post I need to make and I don't really want to post anything too substantial as it's going to get buried in 10 minutes. How about we reach a compromise? I'm going to post 2 of the Top 5 greatest sequences in cinema history from the 525 films I've watched since 2019. No Country for Old Men is my 5th favorite movie of All-Time while Shrek 2 is my 7th. I will return with the other 3 clips in the Top 5 when I eventually find them in life. Ta ta! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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