Popular Post realm722 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 20, 2023 Game: Citizen Sleeper (Narrative / Story Alterator) Analysis: I bought Citizen Sleeper when it was on sale for $15.99 at the end of May 2023. Check another 2022 indie hit off the list for me! Why Citizen Sleeper? As mentioned above, I am always on the prowl for the latest and greatest indie games making their way to PlayStation consoles. I believe the first time I had ever heard of Citizen Sleeper was during Overlode's Game of the Year Debate 2022. They spoke about the game in a relatively glowing fashion and while I had heard that the game was heavily story-focused with some elements that could even remind some of Disco Elysium, I knew I had to eventually check it out for myself. As the heart and soul of this game is dependent on the narrative, I will warn everybody now that there will be (HEAVY SPOILERS) from here onwards as I can't discuss the game how I'd like to without doing so. Wonderfully Well Written - Hands down the #1 quality I will remember about CS when I think about it years down the line will be the quality of writing. The game presents its story and dialogue interactions with characters in paragraph boxes on the right-hand side of the screen which I thought was a very sound decision. I've written a little bit here in the past about how I feel like the vast majority of video games have lackluster story-telling, and worst of all, poor writing. The medium is much less sophisticated than books or movies. Citizen Sleeper is one of the rare few examples where I kept finding myself pausing and saying: "DAMN I love how that's written." I am not a good writer. Do not take my checkmark of quality as a green light. That being said, I AM someone who writes a lot and aspires to be good one day. The game only has one credit for the writer who just so happens to also be the creator and director, Gareth Damian Martin. I'll do some more research after this review is finished but I have to imagine he has published some fiction in his past. It's incredibly flowery and descriptive and that is my JAM if you know anything about me and how I like my verbosity (see: Tim Rogers). Some of my favorite anecdotes include the end of a player character's questline and after he reveals to you his unfortunate backstory of how he ended up here, you let the story linger and eat in silence with one another. You want to let the story permeate and not "break the spell" of what's just been told. One of the many endings also had one of my best bits and that I enjoyed so much that I copied it word for word. “In your time on the Eye you’ve realized there’s nothing out there waiting for you, no fresh starts, and no bright futures, just a whole load of problems you haven’t found yet." DAMN MAN! Let's Talk Survival Aspects - While story and relationships form the heartbeat of CS, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the game's survival elements and my mixed thoughts about them. You are a Sleeper, a robot who had a previous real human body and conscience but for some reason or another, sold it to a corporation to become a slave and work for eternity. At some point, you got tired of that life and made an escape along with others who had the same unfortunate condition. You were one of the lucky ones who made it as far as you did. Except there's one problem. The company you worked for, Essen-Arp, created you like a modern-day printer. They built your body with planned obsolescence in mind. Without the "stabilizers" that are sourced and produced by the corporation, your condition will slowly deteriorate until you eventually die. Putting aside the fact that's a fabulous hook to a science fiction story, it's also an amazing premise for a survival video game. So, what are the gameplay mechanics that form the core loop? There are 3 main things you need to worry about. 1) Condition. Your condition will go down by 1 every day (or cycle, as they're known in-game). You need to ensure your condition doesn't hit 0 because... because... well I actually don't know what happens when you hit 0 because I never came even SLIGHTLY close to permanently shutting off. I think that's okay. You essentially have 5 levels of condition. Stable(best), flickering, fading, declining, & critical(worst). I never had my character in any worse condition than fading. There are a few reasons for this. 1) I progressed Sabine the Doctor's storyline very early which netted me a handful of stabilizers which essentially took the edge off of much of my experience as I knew I always had some in my back pocket. 2) In the endgame, you can grow crops that can eventually net you infinite stabilizers as long as you're working the fields consistently. I think it's OK the player isn't always at an imminent risk of dying. I don't think the game would be better served if it was way harder. Instead, condition just serves as a nice little quiet ticking clock in the background to remind you: "hey... you've gotta do stuff today. You don't have forever to act." which gently nudges the player along the entire runtime of the game. Let's Talk Survival Aspects (Pt. 2) - The second main thing you need to worry about is 2) Energy. This one isn't that big of a deal. It's essentially your hunger. You can restock for 15 Cryo (the currency of CS) from Emphis at the Food Market and I never noticed myself running low without being able to immediately solve the issue. The final and most important aspect of the game has to do with 3) Dice. Dice are how you do EVERYTHING in CS. They allow you to act and progress activities which then allow you to interact with characters. There's a catch though. You have fewer dice to play with the further your condition drops. At stable, you have 5 dice. At flickering, 4 dice. Fading, 3 dice. Etc... Hence, the worse your condition, the less you can accomplish in a single cycle. This is why I made sure to never slip past fading. It not only kept my character healthy, but it also allowed me to maximize the potential of each day while giving me enough time to collect another stabilizer by the time I'd need to use one again. As for the dice themselves, you can roll between a 1 and a 6. Unlike Disco Elysium, the odds are heavily slanted in your favor. Even with a 1, you have a 50% chance for a neutral outcome and a 50% chance for a negative outcome. With a 6, you have a 100% chance of a positive outcome. This means for critical rolls (which you'll always have the ability to pass up until you get a good dice), you can guarantee success. If it sounds obtuse by the way I've explained it, it's not. The game is actually super intuitive and once you get through a handful of cycles, you'll become a pro. Reading is Exhausting - I would be remiss if I didn't bring this up as part of the review. Multiple times while playing Citizen Sleeper, I found myself getting fatigued by reading as at the end of the day, that's going to be what you're doing in the game 80% of the time. The creator says that the game contains over 100,000 words of content. To give you an idea, in this thread, I have written 400,000+ words related to video games over the course of 7 years. While I try to push myself to have a stronger attention span, I think we all have our breaking limits. One day stands out particularly when I had already read and studied 3+ hours in the early morning for another activity in my personal life and later on in the evening I wanted to hang out and play a game. I tried playing Citizen Sleeper. I really couldn't. The game commands your attention and you have to think, for if you don't, you'll absolutely zone in and get through 5-10 minutes before telling yourself: "I can't recall ANYTHING I just read". I turned the game off and played some Rocket League instead as I wanted to make sure I was giving the game the time and attention it deserved. I include this paragraph to say, if you don't have a high tolerance for reading, you're probably not going to enjoy Citizen Sleeper and you should know that even if you DO, you have to have the right mindset to enjoy it. Emphis is a bro. Tala is a sweetheart. Sabine was initially hella sketchy but won me over the end. I'd let Rabiah kill me. None of them can compare to Lem & Mina's cuteness overload at the end of the day though. Talking About My Favorite Characters (Part 1) - As Citizen Sleeper is a character-driven game, I figure it'd only be appropriate if I dedicated a large portion of the review to talk about some of my favorite interactions with this lovely cast. The first character you'll be interacting with most frequently is Dragos. He's lovely. He gets you a place to stay so you can gather your whereabouts and offers you your first job along Erlin's Eye. If you do right by him, he'll do right by you. You also have the first characters you'll meet when exploring the market, Emphis & Sabine. Emphis runs the food market and the way the game describes his cooking ability is scrumptious. I always made sure to tell him my Sleeper's personal stories and dreams and I think he appreciated it. I couldn't find out where to get those grove spores for the longest time. (Explore the full length of the ship, I spent the longest time like a dumbass not realizing there was a button prompt at the very far end to access Founder's Gap). Sabine's storyline is enthralling as it intertwines with Rabiah's. Kinda unfolds like a thriller where you don't know who to trust. The doctor who says that Yatagan (a gang, to put it politely, that runs the "Lowend" of the Eye) is bad news and trying to escape from working from them or trust the gang and point out the shady doctor's past (they USED to work for Essen-Arp). You'd think the answer would be obvious but Rabiah is hella persuasive and I only stood up to her when she was ready to beat the breaks off Sabine when they finally encountered one another. Ethan is a jerk. He's a bounty hunter. I gave him his gun back multiple terms despite his jerk tendencies and he never changed. I guess that's why his brain now paints party of the eye. Talking About My Favorite Characters (Part 2) - Once you start to reach the extended parts of the ship, you'll meet some of the more obscure members of the crew. Tala (pictured above, first on the left) is a total sweetheart and once you become a regular at her bar she'll offer to partner up with you and start y'alls own little kitchen. It's nice to have a kind-hearted character in such a generally oppressive and bleak environment. I have a hilarious story about Ankhita. Her story ends more tragically than most but my most humorous anecdote involves her. She's a mercenary and will demand that you find her a shipmind (a pretty damn rare and hard-to-create item) in order to continue her quest line. She gives you 100 cryo (A LOT of money in the early game) and threatens she'll kill you if you don't keep your word. Coincidentally enough, I ALREADY HAD a shipmind in my inventory from foraging/purchasing scrap and had already crafted it so my Sleeper must have done a Grandpa Simpson around the corner and came back 1 minute later to say "yo I got that shipmind you needed no worry about the money" while pocketing it. NeoVend the Vending Machine is incredible and has an incredible amount of heart for a character you'd think going in would be played off as a joke more than anything else. Bliss is a cutie mechanic you can team up with and get scammed repeatedly due to her ex-boyfriend playing tricks with her OR not getting things in writing. I dig her spunk. But ultimately, the most memorable duo in the game is Lem & Mina, and the game creator even reveals his hand in this by including them in the most endings. They are a father-daughter duo (though not biologically related) and I've only known Mina for 10 hours but if anything were to happen to he-[finish joke]. You take care of her while Lem goes to work shifts for Havenage. There are many paths you can take (staying aboard the eye, winning lotto tickets off of it, leaving separately) and they're some of the most detailed of the entire lot. My Trophy Experience - You CAN earn all of the trophies on one playthrough, but you're going to need to make a few key cloud saves beforehand and know which character's questlines to progress and which not to prevent yourself from getting locked out of some of the endings. I recommend following this TrueAchievements guide that is very light on details but offers you all you need to know really and lets you play the game your way as long as you know what to avoid in the meantime. The guide creator also references this wonderful NeoSeeker Walkthrough which offers you specifics on each character's quest in case you're stuck and baffled for ideas on how to progress (like me with Emphis and the mushrooms not realizing Founder's Gap existed). I did miss one trophy on my playthrough but it related to an optional choice in Dragos quest so I was able to start up a new game and earned it within 10 minutes. If you're a stickler for blind experiences, Citizen Sleeper is SUPER short if you're zooming past dialogue so it wouldn't be the worst grind to get your first ending playing blind and going back for clean-up afterwards. I personally earned the 30.11% rarity platinum in 3 days and 20 hours, making me the 28th fastest achiever at the moment of writing this. In terms of actual play-time, PS5 says it took me around 10 hours to beat the game and I read the dialogue at a fairly decent pace. What Citizen Sleeper 2 Can Improve - Coincidentally enough, while I did not cover the PC Gaming Show for 2023 in my Summer Games Fest 2023 recap, the very game I'm reviewing was announced for a sequel! It's hard to get an accurate gauge from the public given all people posted on Twitch chats was the ResidentSleeper emote. I have a few takes. 1) It looks like they're introducing voice acting. Nice! I hope it's good! That trailer needs some polish and didn't sound the best. I have a few more recommendations if I may... 2) Are we gonna stick solely to dice or are there gonna be actual gameplay mechanics? We have our own ship, you say? I don't expect Fasther Than Light 2.0 but I encourage all my narrative games to dabble in gameplay mechanics. Don't be afraid. 3) It'd be REALLY cool if we could walk around the ship. So much was added to Disco Elysium by being able to explore the world the characters lived in. The distanced ship interface was understandable for an indie dev's first endeavor, but I really hope with the success of this 1st game he tries to be a bit more ambitious and broaden the scope of the game. Would I recommend Citizen Sleeper? If you like reading, absolutely. If you don't, probably not. I really think it's that simple. There was a lot I enjoyed about the game but given the limited gameplay mechanics, I would understand why somebody who just wants to play a game would be turned off by the incredible amount required with very little else to engage with. I'd also like to give the game credit that despite a fairly depressing tone early on given the dystopian setting, the game did not bog you down endlessly with misery. It's an optimistic game and in a world full of increasing cynicism, I appreciate that. I have been on a heater this June with articles and I've got two more article ideas on the way. Until then! Panda Score: 7.85 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.39 / 10 Spoiler Citizen Sleeper Notes Date: June 12th, 2023 Making this our 225th platinum, I’ve heard good things, no idea what to expect! Made in Unity, good to know! Hmmm… a QR code for future game info is interesting, gonna ignore for now 3 classes - Machinist sounds like a handsy time, good with tools, Extractor sounds like the future construction worker who does hard labor, and Operator sounds all fancy like I’m a tech guru and I don’t really get my hands dirty. I’m going to pick Operator… like a surgeon, Tua on the football field! Alright pretty baller opener talking about delay between thinking and feeling “Think of that body” WELP THE GAME CRASHED ON ME IN THE OPENING DANG IT “Remember the others” Ok… so we once sold our body to a corporation. Got fed up. Left. No longer have our old body, now we’re just software. All gathered from our interaction with Dragos. Planned obsolescence. First printers. Now ourselves. Okay so we’ve got timed slots to do things on Erylin’s Eye, like Persona 5 social windows! Condition, action dice, and energy. Gotta balance all 3 to survive! Time to get to work… we’re being nice to Dragos since he gave us a place to rest Hull dissection, 25% positive, 50% neutral, 25% negative.. WE GOT +15 CRYO Welp we just ended a cycle after a good day and now we’re starving… Okay quite intuitive design. I decided to go to the market, and while I spent two dice getting the knowledge to learn of the food vendor and Doctor, I found Emphis for a meal! Nice! We healed 3 food. Sabine is diagnosing our dying condition. Essen-Arp the company we escaped from. So Sabine is going to get some stabilizer via Yatagan, bro in the low-end, cost 60 Cryo to get in there and it’s going to take 3 cycles Okay so… Hunter… trying to murder us… not cool brow Feng is being awfully friendly o us.. Havenage systems engineer He has business for us but we need to wait a few cycles, aight bro! Ayyyy on Cycle Day 4 we paid off our debt to Dragos! Alrightie.. Sabine the OG with the genuine stabilizer gets us up to max condition but we’re gonna have to pay for our next dosage, good to know “I’ve done well by you, and you’re returned the favor” hell yea Dragos finished the 2nd cycle or whatever of whatever was needed in his scrapyard, Emphis eaten at his place 4 times, now I’m telling him a story about our dream Okay we just met Ankhita after stealing some dock plans.. Okay stopping here, pretty happy with my progress for Day 1 learning the ropes Just met the adorable Lem & Mina by unlocking the shipyard, cool peeps We’ve met NeoVend & Tala now and oh no… Ethan the bounty hunter is now here Ethan’s pretty cool given he was contemplating murdering us and sending us back to our slave owners LMAO Ankhita all like: ‘get me a shipment here’s 100+ chits” and I had already crafted one in my inventory from the day before from the orbit exchanger hahaha I’ll keep the cash tho Okie dokie we upgraded to the upgrade that gets everything 20% off, bought a stabilizer for 100 and got to recoup our condition as we were down to 2 dice, and just paid Ethan’s tab 48 chits Okay we got dirt on Yatagan (hacking in triangle mode) and brought all 3 to Sabine Just took care of Mina while Lem took a shift and meant Bun-Bun adorable We gave Ethan back his gun and he STILL tried to shoot us c’mon dawg Okay… waited 4 cycles for Sabina, now Rabiah is scaring me… “local Yatagan lieutenant” Met up with Rabiah… she’s incredibly… persuasive DAMN THIS IS COMPELLING! I have no bloody idea who to trust between Rabiah and Sabina man… they both make good points DAMN THAT SABINE & RABIAH SHOWDOWN WAS GOOD! I told Rabiah to stop and she accused me of having my loyalties easily swayed. Basically, Sabine worked over at Essen-Arp (evil corporation), got out via Yannick, and though he’s part of Yatagan, he’s kinda screwing over this crew by taking Essen-Arp equipment and putting it in Yatagan enforcers despite failure rates and possibly catastrophic damage. Gotta return in 3 cycles but it appears as though I won’t be asked to choose between two sides but rather both these ladies are gonna work it out to go against Yannick Okay critical action with the gun… we ain’t chancing it. 100% positive chance of success! Holy crap… Ethan’s DEAD. Killed by Maywick. Jerk deserved it for betraying us even after we gave him the gun AGAIN Okay I am thoroughly enjoying the game wrapping up Day 2. Got Yannick’s trust, realized it was a set-up by Rabiah and Sabine to get close to him and now I got another critical role Damn we just crushed the Essen-Arp connection keeping Yannick alive… RIP I’m a moron who did not discover the Founder’s Gap all the way at the end of the station until just now lmao no wonder I haven’t been able to progress Emphis or ankhita’s storylines Eshe & Peake seem pretty cool! WOOHOO GOT 3 STABILIZER’S FOR FINISHING SABINE/RABIAH QUEST! Ankhita and Ashton Showdown >_> DAMN WE JUST GOT A LOT OF CHITS FROM ANKHITA! Moneybags Ankhita. Granted, she did kill a guy who was caring for a fellow sleeper so yanno… she feels guilty… but we got 327 chits now call me Moneybags Sleeper! Alright with Feng we just confronted Hardin Hurst… and just like Sabine/Rabiah setting me up, he got super aggressive all part of a PLOT to scare Hardin into calling his Solheim friends back when he was one of the oppressors… everybody has secret plans here that we just sorta go along with I guess! Tala is best girl just growing shrooms and running a bar what more can you want Enjoying the game and wrapping up a fair amount of quests at this point. Will say one downside is getting reading fatigue from the game as I don’t play a lot of games with this much writing AYYYY WE got the rare mushrooms for Riko & Emphis! NeoVend needs a shipmind? Barely an inconvenience, we got one on hand already! Okay Navigator is pretty freaking cool… the Hunter is stuck between two decisions like the monster Amnesia Bunker 2nd stream JPH and Navigator saying: “I think I am thinking, therefore I am thinking. The writing in this game is great man, Emphis final backstory of his unfortunate circumstances and how he ended up a cook, his scars, not speaking to not “break the spell”, very well-written We chose to catch the killer and not kill it and now Navigator is being sassy with us Awww Feng’s conclusion quest is wonderful. Ousted Hardin for being a cruel psycho ready to dismantle the eye and all its inhabitants, frees of us any ties to Essen-Arp, we golden! DAYUM WE GOT PAID BY BLISS! FINALLY! After all those empty contracts… I’m up to 828 chits now! This feels like an ending on the thread with the Gardener… WE’RE BREAKING IT! Awww that’s a neat ending. Shoutout to Gardener bro… that’s an okay ending I think, bit sad for us to just peace out on Riko like that tho Did the other ending, gripping Riko’s hand Aww Ankhita “In your time on the Eye you’ve realized there’s nothing out there waiting for you, no fresh starts, and no bright futures, just a whole load of problems you haven’t found yet” Damn The ending where you leave Lem?mina and get a solo ticket is cold af Alrightie… I got the plat! Lots of thoughts! 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 15 hours ago, pelagia14 said: Wait - Cassy, are you legitimately a marine biologist?! If so, that's awesome! I was the kid in elementary school who would answer the "What do you want to be when you grow up" question with "Either an oceanographer or marine biologist". ? Then by the time I reached college, I had made peace with the fact that while science (and especially biology) are incredible, being a scientific researcher would not be a fulfilling career for me. So I will be sad if I missed that the comment was made in jest. Yes and no. Of all my stupid inside jokes, that one is the stupidest. I went to school for oceanography, I have multiple degrees in it, but my actual job has nothing to do with marine science. I don't even live near the ocean. In my defense, I have gotten to work in wetlands and estuaries, so I'm not so far removed that I feel those years were a waste. I just like to pretend I get to swim with dolphins, which I think was what I was envisioning 20+ years ago. To keep from hijacking this thread, I'll say Citizen Sleeper isn't something I've heard of, but I went ahead and added it to my wish list. I seem to do that with a lot of realm's games. You're the reason I can't finish my backlog! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum_Vice Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 16 hours ago, realm722 said: Game: Citizen Sleeper Dayum. Been eyeing this one off after enjoying Disco Elysium. Sorry realm, I only read the first couple of paragraphs and skipped to the Panda Score - can't risk a single spoiler for this one. Will have to come back to read the review once I've played it. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: So before I say anything, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this is one of the best replies to a post I've ever received on this thead. Originally, I considered making that my goal but then as soon as I was barely even halfway to describing just my own I thought: "hell nah" lmao. I'm going to update that post every time though as I'm going to link it from here onward when describing a game I've just played. If I ever get to genres that I haven't touched quite yet, they'll be added to the list! Oh! I'm so glad that my post was well-received. After I hit submit (and discovered you had made another post in the time I took to write it all up), I started wondering if I took things a little too seriously/intensely and would come off weird, haha. It totally makes sense to not define genres that you haven't personally played - see my question about Brawler vs Fighter, lmao. Though I'm excited to hear that whenever you play games outside of the current list, you'll be making updates! On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: Yooooo for whatever reason reading your comment I had the epiphany for "Reflex Runner" and I love how that sounds given how fast-twitched you have to be for the input commands on the games listed. Thank you for inadvertently helping me out with that! ? Reflex Runner's got alliteration and makes it clear that you aren't talking about a Mosey Adventure or something similar. That's genius! On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: Not at all! Honestly, I appreciated your detailed analysis. I'll be 100% honest with you and I flew through those genres while creating them since they're not really relevant to the vast majority of my gaming catalog lol. Like, I have listed 3 multiplayer games for me and I made them Rocket League (since I do play the game still exclusively online), as well as FIFA 22 since I got a lot of trophies online in that game as well as Journey thanks to my 1st playthrough experience with a random player. If I played an Overwatch OR Rainbow Six Siege or some other type of game actively I probably would have paid it more thought but I like playing games on my time which makes both online and co-op games incredibly rare for me. I don't even play that many multiplayer games - Destiny 2 is the big one for me, since I made several good friends through playing it. Sometimes I'll do some couch co-op with the husband. But I definitely prefer multiplayer games that let me work together with my friends (with some small competitive aspects being fine). On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: For me at least, the distinction comes less from the button inputs as much as the competition. In a Braweler, you're usually taking on tens of weak foes at a time and doing everything from launching them into the air and juggling to ground slams and so forth. In a Fighter, minus some quirky ones, you're almost always taking on just ONE opponent and while those games do sometimes have stories and single-player, their longevity and fame come from the online community and taking your skills up against another player. Another ? moment for me - thank you! Brawler = 1vMany and Fighter = usually 1v1 is easy enough for my brain to remember! On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: IT IS SO COOL!!! The more time that passes, the more my appreciation for those games grows. The developers are also releasing their 3rd game, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew which dropped a release date trailer during the PC Gaming Show. I am HYPED! Even if it's largely more of the same, those games scratch an itch I didn't even know I had. Though Desperados is the latest release, I reflect on Shadow Tactics a bit more fondly due to the feudal Japan setting and loving the cast just a bit more. I'm a sucker for games with a Japanese aesthetic (whether modern or historical), so Shadow Tactics will likely be the one I play first. And good to know that Shadow Gambit is being made by the same people - I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for coverage of it! On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: THANK YOU!!!! Compact World encompasses much better what I was trying to convey. "Hey, we're still Open, but we're not totally unfurled". I will be changing those titles in my spreadsheet and on the post. ? On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: "Branching Story" is a decent alternative. I'd say it feels too long but it's 14 letters compared to Story Alternator's 15 letters and when I hit the point when I'm counting individual letters on my genre labels I feel like I've gone too deep and need to occupy my mind with other things before I end up a shell of a man. Butterfly Effect just makes me think of Until Dawn lmao Wow - I only watched 2-3 minutes of that guy's commentary starting from the timestamp but I might have to check out the whole video at some point! Oh Until Dawn, you were such a campy game... ? On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: Bingo! In Civ 6, the decisions you make at the start of a playthrough (where to build your cities, what government or policies you want to focus on, etc..) have consequences later in the game. Poor early game play can cost you in the late game. While that may sound stressful, I appreciate the gravitas decisions have in those games because EVERYTHING feels important. Grand Level games meanwhile are limited and even if you play super poorly in a level and barely make it out alive, next mission, you're back to 100%. For genres, I feel like I now has much smart. Very wisdom. So knowledge. Many brain learnings. On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: I'll be honest and say that the Final Fantasy XVI hype train is chugging at 150MPH and I'm damn near tempted to jump on board. I listened to the Friends Per Second podcast featuring a bunch of creators I enjoy and the lead voice actor for the game is a HUGE trophy hunter. He talked about going for the platinum in The Witness & FF13. Instantly made me love him and while I may not play it (at least not at release), I'll probably be glued to some playthrough of it that I find from one of my many streamers. Yooooo SkillUp and that FPS podcast episode are huge reasons why I am so excited for FF16!! It was awesome hearing the voice actor nerd out about videogames and trophy hunting towards the end, I completely agree. Everyone who has had the chance to have an early preview of segments of the game has really praised the portions of the narrative that they have experienced. I'm also excited to experience a Final Fantasy where the first voice recordings are done in English, plus really intrigued that we don't have a party of characters in the game. (I know that there will be guest characters in parts, probably like how FF2 has several different guests who join the party for certain portions of the quest.) On 6/20/2023 at 0:41 AM, realm722 said: lmao that had me in stitches. He probably thought to himself: "dammit y'all hold on pull it back" and at the very least could be relieved knowing he had that in his back pocket for the finale. As for the actual trailer itself, I'll confess to you... I saw the first few seconds and closed out! I KNOW NOTHING about the original FF7. Cait Sith and Vincent and Cid? All I know about Cid is from Kingdom Hearts lmao. I've played the FF7 Remake, ADORED IT (seriously, that's my first INSANELY long review of 8k+ words and kinda marks a turning point in this thread) but have so many bloody questions about flashbacks from the original because I genuinely don't know any of the lore. Don't feel bad for mentioning any of those names either, I legit got no idea who you're referencing so it doesn't even qualify as a spoiler lmao It was really exciting to come across your FFVII Remake review a while back. Final Fantasy VII was my first RPG as a kid, and holds a special place in my heart for many reasons. I'm obviously not alone in that sentiment, but it also meant that it was hard for me to tell how enjoyable FF7:R would be for people who don't have heavy nostalgia goggles on or familiarity with the story and characters. Reading that someone who did not know play the OG game or know the lore still had such a great experience with the game was delightful (and helped me feel validated in saying that it is an incredible game!). If you ever want to talk about your Remake questions relating to OG lore (and get potential Rebirth/Game #3 spoilers from it), don't be shy to message me! I also completely understand if you want to continue playing the game without any outside knowledge, however - especially since they've made it clear that these remakes are making changes to the story, and the end of Remake already introduced some big and small changes. On 6/20/2023 at 0:53 AM, realm722 said: Game: Citizen Sleeper (Narrative / Story Alterator) Analysis: I bought Citizen Sleeper when it was on sale for $15.99 at the end of May 2023. Check another 2022 indie hit off the list for me! Why Citizen Sleeper? As mentioned above, I am always on the prowl for the latest and greatest indie games making their way to PlayStation consoles. I believe the first time I had ever heard of Citizen Sleeper was during Overlode's Game of the Year Debate 2022. They spoke about the game in a relatively glowing fashion and while I had heard that the game was heavily story-focused with some elements that could even remind some of Disco Elysium, I knew I had to eventually check it out for myself. As the heart and soul of this game is dependent on the narrative, I will warn everybody now that there will be (HEAVY SPOILERS) from here onwards as I can't discuss the game how I'd like to without doing so. Oooh! This has been on my list ever since I listened to SkillUp praise the game's story. I'm really excited to hear that the game's narrative is excellent, and via a more thorough review! I did skip past the paragraphs about your favorite characters so as to not influence my own eventual thoughts on the game, but will come back to read that section in the future. 22 hours ago, Cassylvania said: Yes and no. Of all my stupid inside jokes, that one is the stupidest. I went to school for oceanography, I have multiple degrees in it, but my actual job has nothing to do with marine science. I don't even live near the ocean. In my defense, I have gotten to work in wetlands and estuaries, so I'm not so far removed that I feel those years were a waste. I just like to pretend I get to swim with dolphins, which I think was what I was envisioning 20+ years ago. To keep from hijacking this thread, I'll say Citizen Sleeper isn't something I've heard of, but I went ahead and added it to my wish list. I seem to do that with a lot of realm's games. You're the reason I can't finish my backlog! Haha, I don't do anything related to my college degrees either! Also, these trophy cabinet threads are simultaneously the best and worst thing ever for my backlog. ? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted June 23, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 23, 2023 Game: Towaga: Among Shadows (Shoot 'Em Up) Analysis: I bought Towaga when it was on sale for $1.49 towards the end of April 2023 and I think we've got ourselves a decent empty calorie burner here! Why Towaga: Among Shadows? Towaga first popped up on my radar when I was in hyper-scouting mode for games created in countries from which I have not experienced a video game. As the South America well had run dry, I shifted my focus over to Europe which had the 2nd highest probability of being able to complete a full continent despite the dramatic increase in the number of countries. The creators of Towaga are a development studio known by the name of Sunnyside Games, and they are based out of Lausanne, Switzerland! Despite being one of the most well-off nations in the world when measured by overall development, it's a bit curious to think that I struggle to think of many creative endeavors that have left the country and gone global. Perhaps the high cost of living stifles artistic development? When I think of the Swiss, I think of neutrality, chocolate, Roger Federer, & Xherdan Shaqiri. Let's see if they're any good at making video games! The Incredible Simply Gameplay Loop - There's not much complexity to Towaga's design, and I somehow think it makes the game better than if they were trying to do too much. If you'd like a visual, here's a sample of some gameplay. Essentially, you're stuck in a stationary position as John Towaga and must shoot down enemies before they reach your player character and do damage. The only two buttons you'll be touching 99% of your time with the game are the right stick to aim where to fire your beam along with the L2 button which recharges every so often and allows you to do a power move of either repelling enemies, petrifying(freezing) them, a burst of damage, etc.. That's all there is to it! There are 42 levels in the Main Story campaign and 20 levels in the additional The Void campaign. You will need to play all the way through both in order to obtain all of the unlockables necessary for the platinum. Honestly, the levels begin to fly by once you get into a groove as the phase of each level doesn't take very long. Aside from the main game, you have two bonus modes which are Survival & Flying. Survival is an endless gauntlet that keeps throwing enemies at you until you finally die and Flying Mode is the same concept except it's the one mode in the game that actually lets you move Mr. Towaga around. I've read some say that it's the hardest mode but for me, it was the easiest? I found it stupidly easy to kite around enemies in circles and fly along the edges of the screen while blasting down any projectiles before they reached me. Why do I say "empty calorie burner"? - That line I used at the introduction of this review can be interpreted as a diss. Is Towaga: Among Shadows going to be a memorable game for me that I'm recommending on the internet a year from now? Absolutely not. Is it going to end up as one of my Top 20 games of 2023? Absolutely not. Is it a bad game? No... it's not. Lemme explain what went through my mind once I realized the super simplistic gameplay loop and what the next 4-5 hours of play-time would entail. "Cool. I could do this for a few hours without getting too bored." That's it! Sometimes in life, you don't want a deep intricate story with characters you care about. Sometimes you don't want endlessly enthralling gameplay that has you on the edge of your seat. Sometimes, all you want in life is a mindless task to keep you occupied while you watch and listen to your favorite Canadian streamer bumble through Final Fantasy XVI. I'll do a sports illustration as they're the ones that most reach my heart. The Georgia Bulldogs are the brand-new bullies of college football. They've won back-to-back Championships, clobbered TCU 65-7 in a final, and are the heavy favorites to do it all over AGAIN in 2023. But guess what? Georgia isn't out here playing Alabama & Tennessee every week. It'd be too much for them. Part of the appeal of these mega-dominant college football schools is that they only play 3-4 teams a year that actually have enough talent to put up a fight against them. So what do they fill the rest of their 12-game schedule with? FCS opponents & Vanderbilt. FCS opponents only agree to get their asses kicked because the big-time schools pay them. and Vanderbilt? Well, he's just happy to be here. Towaga: Among Shadows is the Vanderbilt of video games. End of illustration. Big Sundered Vibes - There's not much depth in this paragraph other than for me to say, "hey this pretty purple game with some flowery lore and overly complicated character names kinda reminds me of this other pretty purple game with some flowery lore and overly complicated character names." In case I haven't made it obvious enough, I didn't really pay attention to the lore in the game though it is delivered in very small, digestible amounts. There's a bad guy. You've gotta purify a few shrines and save a few people. Keep shooting these enemies in the face with your beam and you'll accomplish your goal in no-time. A Quick Trophy Platinum Guide - This is a game with less than 200 owners(NA Edition) and no published trophy guide but thanks to the likes of @OFFICER_OILDAB with his helpful post and @visighost with his helpful post, I managed to snag the 35.33% rarity platinum in 23 hours and 45 minutes (or 5 hours of actual play-time) I'll break down the steps very easily. 1) Complete Main Story Mode. You CAN use Assist Mode and it will not disable trophies. I started using it after Level 7 as enemies started kicking my ass despite upgrading my build and it made the rest of the game a cakewalk. Try to complete phases without getting hit regardless as it increases your multiplier and that increases the # of shards you gain at the end of each level. 2) Complete The Void Mode. There is NO assist mode here. Upgrade your build (done from the main menu under profile) and do the best you can. I died plenty. If you're dying a lot, I personally restarted the main story mode to get more shards until I finally was strong enough to survive to the end. In Void Mode, during Level 4 & Level 17, there is an orange crystal you must break to unlock two outfits which is necessary for completion. Break them! With that, use the build recommendation by OFFICER to get the outfits for the high scores in Survival & Flying Mode. I did each on my 1st try attempt. It's not hard even with no assist mode. Finally, the easiest phase. Make sure you have around 1,000 shards and backup your save to the Cloud or USB. By doing this, you avoid the need to endlessly grind for an extra 3+ shards and instead can unlock the two remaining outfits for "Outfits bearer" and then reload. Now unlock all the instruments. Reload. Rinse & repeat. Congrats! You got the platinum. There are a few other miscellaneous combat ones in there but you're a smart guy, you'll figure it out on your own. Would I recommend Towaga: Among Shadows? Maybe. As I said earlier, this is not a very memorable game or one I'll be telling the grandkids about. But it's also not a bad time. Sometimes you just want a game you can zone out on and twiddle your thumbs with while focusing your attention elsewhere. In case I haven't made it obvious either, this game ISN'T a total farce. You may waltz through the main story mode with assist mode on but get ready to get your ass blasted in The Void in that case. You'll die plenty, I know I did. It demands just enough attention out of the player to never make you mindlessly bored and that's just enough of a challenge to keep you entertained for the time required to earn the platinum. I am going to be going away on a trip for the end of June so I'm glad this wraps up my 4 games for the month. Maybe I squeeze another one in before the end, maybe not. I've got another video game idea thread in the cooker and this one is spicy. See y'all then! Panda Score: 6.51 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.87 / 10 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted June 26, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 26, 2023 The Video Games I Would Create If I Had Talent (Part 2) Episode #1 of this Series The Elevator Pitch / Genre: Spanish-Language Learning Game + Sexy Spanish Lady(Guide) + Action (Complex) + Roguelite Where I Got The Idea From - The other week I was in bed late at night catching up on some sports news and while doing so, was listening to Travis Scott's Rodeo. One song in particular, "Maria I'm Drunk" began to play and while I can honestly take or leave the rest of the song, there's a bit in the early portion that always sticks out in my mind. "Calling for Mariaaaaaaaa, lost without Mariaaaaaaaaa, might dive in the marinaaaaaaa" For whatever reason, that song helped me click with a game idea I had earlier in the day. Hades is a brilliant video game. So much so, there's so much more you can do with that particular formula. While getting to know all the various personalities of Olympus on a relatively surface-level basis is nice and all, what if you could see an entire relationship blossom with just one individual over the course of several tens of hours? Could that even be possible? How would it even work? The more I workshopped it in my brain, I came up with quite the genre fusion. I present to you all, "Maria Mi Maestra". Spanish-Language Learning Game - As a Spanish-speaking person (who by and large uses it on an everyday basis and essentially every person I interact with either speaks it in addition to English or speaks it exclusively), I have grown tired of some of the Spanish representation in games or movies where a character who's Hispanic or Latino (there's a difference y'all) is relegated to saying "oye esé", "hermano", or some other one or two-word catchphrase whenever he's interacting with the rest of whatever crew he forms a part of. Listen, I know WHY this is. For most people who don't speak Spanish, you can't have them completely fail to understand a character if they don't have subtitles on. But... what if you made a game about a person who doesn't know Spanish interacting with someone who speaks it exclusively? How could you bridge that game? It'd be clunky and obtuse at first, but I think with enough familiarity, you'd start to see some progress. I'd like to implement this in terms of GAMEPLAY. Minigames where players must rapidly identify words or meanings of sentences and without a pause button so you can't cheat. Higher reward for answering correctly more quickly. Challenges or attacks where you will be told to move in a certain direction or action and the player must know and understand the Spanish term in order to react accordingly. Is the game going to be as effective as say... Rosetta Stone? Maybe not. But I actually do think you could teach some basic fundamental speaking skills to a broad audience. Sexy Spanish Lady (who serves as your guide) - Of course, most people don't go out of their way to learn a language. So how do you bring them into the proverbial tent? You make a hot woman the mascot of your video game. Nier: Automata did it with 2B. We can do it too. Let me explain this premise, Maria (I mean, it doesn't have to be Maria, I just like the alliteration. We can experiment with it) is a Hispanic woman (I'm leaning towards Colombian) who is cursed with being locked inside of an amulet. The player character (random guy who does not speak Spanish), finds that amulet and puts it around his neck, creating this relationship. She can communicate with him, and this odd friendship is formed. Now, unlike many forms of media that use an attractive woman as bait, I'm not trying to make Maria this stupidly fan-servicey nothing character who's more obnoxious and annoying on top of sexy above all else. That'd be HORRIBLE. Maria is going to be talking A LOT throughout this game. Like, an unreal amount. She is going to have social-link equivalent interactions with the player at the end of each failed run. The player must be invented in getting to know her as a person in order for the game to work. Instead, I think we slowplay it. Make Maria friendly, but not overbearing. She tries to be helpful and root for the player but she's not fawning over him. The attraction and mutual appeal should grow with time, not right when the game starts. I think it'd be hilarious if you could create some runs when they're actually bickering with one another and aren't on the best of terms. Maybe Maria gives the character the silent treatment for a run and offers no aid. My point is this, while we are admittedly using the cheap trick of making an attractive lady the face of our game, we actually add some nuance once the brainless men drones are inside of the tent to offer them much more than they ever could have possibly anticipated. In terms of her design, make her tall, Esmeralda from Hunchback of Notre Dame keeps popping into my head. The casting for this voice actress would be a nightmare. She can't have an obnoxious voice. You can't have Sofia Vergara in the player's ear for 40 hours. It'd be a tall task but I think it could be done. Roguelite + Action (Complex) - Unsurprisingly, a huge portion of my inspiration of the game is straight-up ripping off Hades. Instead of making it Greek mythology, make it Spanish culture. I was personally thinking of levels featuring Mexican, Cuban, Spainard, & Colombian designs. Once they clear those 4 regions, the player character takes on a final boss. If they defeat the boss 6 times (as the game increases in difficulty each time), the character and Maria finally escape, she is released from the amulet, and they walk off into the sunset together. You could really go hardcore for this. For healing items, make it dishes from various countries. A bandeja paisa recovers 40 heatlh. Make the final boss of a zone mock the player for being a gringo and put his Spanish-understanding skills to the test. Obviously, you can't rip off Hades one-for-one. That game is special, but you can replicate some of essence of its snappiness and ability for the player to fly through zones while collecting upgrades to diversify their moveset. Oh, and if it hasn't been obvious until now, this game MUST BE GORGEOUS to stand out from amongst the rest. The Unfeasibility Of This Game - While I think this project is easier in scope that my first idea (which would involve 30+ characters with voice-acting), I think I've somehow managed to make one way more complex in actual practice. Making a good roguelite is HARD. You can add some Spanish flair, but the game has to feel well in order for players to want to continue to bang their heads against the wall with increasing difficulty. Making the Spanish lady endearing and lovable and not just boobs on a stick is going to take some effort. The amount of voiced lines I'd wnt for the relationship to evolve over time is gargantuan. I'd like there to be many unique events and for the relationship to go through the ups and downs that one would go through with each of their characters being in precarious and unfortunate circumstances. Making her not annoying is going to be VERY difficult. The worst thing you can be in video games is annoying. Freya, from Forspoken, is proof of that. Don't make an obnoxious jerk protagonist and your game prolly wouldn't have gotten dunked on endlessly, Square. Then, as if those two factors weren't difficult enough, incorporate education into the game with meaningful efforts to get the player to learn Spanish as a language. Yea, it's not surprising to me why this one hasn't been made yet. Maybe one day, though. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slicknick3822 Posted June 27, 2023 Share Posted June 27, 2023 On 6/19/2023 at 11:53 PM, realm722 said: Would I recommend Citizen Sleeper? If you like reading, absolutely. Sounds like my type of game! On 6/25/2023 at 7:53 PM, realm722 said: Sexy Spanish Lady (who serves as your guide) Nerds everywhere would speak Spanish because of your game but would also not tell anyone HOW they learned Spanish lol 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breakingthegreen Posted July 2, 2023 Share Posted July 2, 2023 (edited) On 19/06/2023 at 2:44 AM, realm722 said: The Gamer’s Guide to Defining Video Games Genres in the 21st Century Video game genre definitions and terminology have been bad for a very long time. The situation has gotten worse in recent years due to the number of genres mixing and matching known formulas which only further complicates matters. I know I'm not the only one with this struggle. @Cassylvania has been fighting the good fight for nearly a decade. Categorization and grouping in general can feel like a futile task given the amount of nuance typically involved in most matters. Despite the absurdity of this assignment, I have decided to take this burden upon myself and try to at the very least move the needle in the smallest possible fashion towards a better future of defining video game genres. I may fail. I may succeed. There are going to be some wildly radical ideas I'm going to propose but if you'd just hear out my arguments, I think I could sway you over to my side. Buckle up because we're going on a journey! Blast from the about 2 week old past, I have just visited my brother and I've got all the folders he's got to me sort games into, I don't know if you'd wanna use any of them realm277, but I think you may like them anyway: (17 pics, I'll put them in the spoiler warning) Spoiler A few things to note, If the folder is marked with "a" the folder is a sub-genre, and "b" is franchise (or developer's output) and will sometimes only mostly follow the genre indicated by the number. The numbers mark the larger genre that each of the folders belong to. Even then some of the sub folders are very tenuous like the "Mike Bithell" section in the platformers number, despite only one game being a platformer. 0: Games that are effectively multiplayer exclusive 1: Shooters 2: RPGs or has some form of levelling 3: Narrative focused games 4: Platformers 5: Puzzle or Puzzle Adjacent 6: Melee Focused 7: Survival Horror 8: Sports and Racing 9: Tactical These games are mostly on streaming, my brother just likes to see them like this, and many are now unplayable after leaving PS Plus Premium so I don't want anyone asking where they can find Sonic 4 on PS4 Here's my photos: Edited July 3, 2023 by breakingthegreen Tone edit 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aceterix Posted July 3, 2023 Share Posted July 3, 2023 (edited) I am a Muppet More posts please, always great reads. Edited July 3, 2023 by Aceterix Personal stupidity 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted July 6, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 6, 2023 Game: Tangle Tower (Point-and-click, Mystery) Analysis: I bought Tangle Tower when it was on sale for $4.99 back in late March 2023. This is arguably my 3rd point-and-click game of the year after LotCG & Agent A! Why Tangle Tower? Sometimes my reasons for buying a game are complex and essay worthy. Other times, they're mind-numbingly simple. Tangle Tower is one of the latter. Back towards the end of March, I noticed an exceeding lack of 100% games in my backlog that would help me start off each month with a simple, relatively short game. I did some research on some 100%'s that rated highly and Tangle Tower was one I saw pop up repeatedly. For a $20 price tag, I would never touch it. But at 75% off, I figured it'd be worth the gamble even if it's not a genre I typically prefer. As it turns out, I still found quite a bit to enjoy even if the gameplay loop didn't enthrall me. Elite Voice Acting All The Way Through - Good lord, man. Let me give a standing ovation to the entire team credited for the voices behind the game. (Source) Kimlinh Tran, Edwyn Tiong, Amber Lee Connors, Doug Stone, Faye Mata, John Mondelli, Sarah Anne Williams, Joshua Tomar, & Tiana Camacho. I don't think I've ever played a game where the performances of the entire crew have single-handedly lifted my engagement of the game from nonchalant/disinterested into being excited whenever I had to interrogate a certain character. The two main characters (Detective Grimoire & Sally seen in the image) start off strong enough, but once you start interviewing the various members of the Fellow & Pointer family is when the game really took off for me in terms of keeping me entertained. Fifi is a quirky girl and if you immediately gravitate to her you probably also love Futaba from Persona 5. She's a total dweeb but I enjoyed hearing her rants. Poppy is a goth emo piano girl. But she wasn't always like that. If you like her, you probably also have the hots for amethyst-eating Abigail in Stardew Valley. I personally have a debilitating kryptonite for crazy so you can already imagine how Penelope was my favorite. Bird girls are hot. What the hell am I saying? Listen, at the end of the day, my lasting memory of this game isn't going to be anything with the actual murder mystery, any of the puzzles, and most definitely not any of the droning sections where you have to ask every single character for their opinion on every clue. It's going to be the voice acting. It's phenomenal, all of the actors put in one hell of a performance, and if every game had voice acting like Tangle Tower all would be better for it. Can't Judge As An Adventure Game - I can't remember at what point in my life I decided that I'd never play a point-and-click adventure game blind but it happened at some point and I have never been given any incentive to go back. Listen, if you're into these sorts of games, I congratulate you. I just am not the sort of person with the patience to run through room after room in the entire game trying to click on the one item that slipped past me in order to progress. I played with a walkthrough. I still had a fun time! You get to enjoy the sensational voice acting with none of the obtuse frustration. Of course, as I played the game with an aid, I can't really judge the game's puzzles or intuitive reasoning with any meaningful accuracy. If I had to give some pot shot analysis, I'd say it falls into the trap many adventure games sink into with being a bit too far out there at times for players to make a logical leap in logic. That doesn't mean I disliked all of it. I thought some of the puzzle scenarios where you had to highlight one part of an object with another part of an object to show evidence or a contradiction were good. But for the most part, it's more of the same from these sorta games. A Disappointing Ending - (HUGE END GAME MURDER REVEAL SPOILERS) Yea so by the time you make it to the end of the game, several of the final hidden rooms will have been revealed to you that slowly reveal how Freya Fellow was murdered. The culprit and person responsible then reveals itself... oh hey it was Penelope! What a shocker! She was disguised as Detective Hawkshaw! No freaking way! She allows you to tie her up and explains her motives, how she got the golden beetle from Pointer, what happened to her past family, etc... but bird girls never go down without a fight! A bird of hers triggers the beetle again, knocking both detectives out. The game then ends abruptly with the rest of the cast (Fitz, Poppy, & Fifi) waking both protagonists and explaining that Penny got away in their boat and her whereabouts are unknown before rolling credits. It felt incredibly rushed and abrupt and just sorta like the development team over at SFB Games either have a sequel in mind (which I don't even know how that would work) or ran out of money and needed to pump the game out. Perhaps I'm being too harsh. But it felt like the rest of the family (Felix, Pointer, etc..) and instead we got none of that. Would I recommend Tangle Tower? Maybe. If you like point-and-click games and/or don't mind playing with a guide, sure. If not, I'd probably pass. I wonder if there's an incredibly starter-level adventure game that I could play and attempt without any guide to see if the genre can serve me even in the slightest. Tangle Tower is probably one of my favorites I've played in the genre just because of the themes and elements around it. The Music Room theme has some of my favorite music I've heard in a game all year. I was kind of hoping for a trial section at the end of the game where all the characters were gathered together and I could have actually seen them interact. But alas, can't have everything. I ultimately earned the 62.18% rarity 100% completion in 1 week and 1 day. Back from vacation, I'm ready to hit the ground running for some great games in July. Let's get to it! Panda Score: 6.42 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.27 / 10 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted July 9, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 9, 2023 Game: Ruiner (Action (Complex), Bullet Hell) Analysis: I bought Ruiner when it went on sale for $1.99 back in early June 2023. That's the lowest it has ever been discounted! Why Ruiner? Ruiner is one of those games that beat me into submission in order to finally play it. You can check out the PSPrices discount link in the opening sentence. The developers over at Reikon Games (a Polish studio for the record) have made a concerted effort to discount the game over 80% off virtually every other month since mid-2020. What this has caused is I've literally seen this game in damn near every sale scan I've done when scouting for new games. It checks all the items off my list. Has some solid visuals and nice goals, the trophy guide said it'd only take me around 10 hours, and the platinum was a very decent rarity bordering on just over 10%. So why did it take me so long? I dunno. It seemed quite edgy which it was and something I'll cover more in detail later in this review. I had a very similar experience with Mark of the Ninja always popping up at the top of every sale every time I sorted by OpenCritic score and that led to me eventually playing and platinuming it. When you become familiar with something and it around enough, your curiosity may grow, and at an all-time low price, I figured now would be as good a time as any to give it some run. Running and Gunning - Ruiner is incredibly simple in its structure. The path forward will almost always be obvious with some occasional slight offshoots for some collectible items and resources. You have the ability to attack an onslaught of foes with either melee or ranged weapons. I've gotta be honest, I don't know why the hell you would ever fight actual enemies with melee attacks. I feel like that's a great way to get your health to vanish instantly. The only times I ever swung to attack with R1 were when I needed to blow up "an angel core" OR to take out the drone machines that deplete energy or health. The reason why I labeled this game as "complex" action-wise is holy crap there are a lot of upgrades. I didn't even get familiar with most of them. There's a shield, mind control, dash buffs, supply drones, time manipulation, charged attacks, barriers, etc.. that provide a wide array of options for a player willing to experiment. I kept things relatively conservative and largely focused on the energy shield, reflex booster, dash, & resource optimizer. More Gameplay Thoughts - I'll be perfectly honest here and state that even after completing 3 FULL playthroughs of Ruiner... I still have some questions and doubts about how accurate the game is with more inflicting and receiving damage. You're meant to play incredibly high and fast-paced, at least, I'm 99% sure that's what the developers intended by giving you 3 dashes from the very start and allowing you to instantly pick up an enemy's gun right after you kill them. You will progress through a series of levels, enter arenas where you have to kill enemies, occasionally fight a mini-boss bounty hunter, and eventually make it to the very end to fight the boss of the stage. Yet, especially on Hard mode (when you're going to be dying the most) sometimes I felt like bullets were hitting me and yet they weren't. Yet other times, I'll think I'm playing well, and I'll look up at my health bar and see I'm on the brink of death. It's very difficult for me to perceive when I'm receiving damage. Strafing, dashing, and constantly moving is going to be the key to success. If you stand still, you're going to die very quickly. While I don't think the collision system is perfect, Ruiner doesn't sweat the small details. This game is SNAPPY. Reloads are damn near instant on the PS5. I love how flashy it is. You always get the amount of enemies you kill, karma(game's experience) earned, and time for completion after each stage for a final ranking. Not to brag or anything, but I consistently got A+ or above and only on a handful of brutal stages (where I felt like the wave of enemies was unending) did I get my sad anime girlfriend upset at me and told me to try harder... It's not my favorite combat system I've ever played but it's very easy to pick up and zone out to while listening to something else, which for me is a very nice compliment! Inherently Not My Style - As I had suspected when examining the game each time it popped up on sale, Ruiner is very, very edgy. I don't really do edge. I like my desk corners curved. Still, while I admit that A LOT about what this game is not for me, it does it all very well. I'll list a few examples. 1) You have an anime girlfriend in your head who takes off more clothes in her celebratory pose when you get an S-rank, yet has WAY more clothes on if you do poorly. Look at the image below. She's not wearing pants, right? I don't think so. Yet if you score an E, she'll be in a bundled up hoodie all depressed. That made me crack up. 2) There are DOOM-style glory kills. On certain occasions, an enemy near the brink of death will have a yellow circle appear around them. Click R3 and you'll uppercut them out of existence and send their bloody guts flying as debris. I've gotta admit, this is a satisfying mechanic. It helps that they make you temporarily invulnerable and heal you a bit which means you'll be doing it A LOT on your hard mode run. 3) The story and characters. There's lots of swearing in this by your enemies. Your guy never says a peep. He just nods his head or cracks his knuckles and then bashes a player's skull in. You torture a former enemy boss into opening paths for you by frying his brain. (SPOILERS) Not that the story of Ruiner is incredible and worthy of protection, but shocker, your anime girlfriend betrays you in the end and she's kinda evil man! Dammit! Just like the simulations! This portion felt goofy because there was absolutely no voice acting and it was all communicated through plain red text on the screen. Despite the ending and this not being "my thing", it's incredibly stylistic and I understand how the game has garnered a bit of a cult following. Seriously, look up and of the YouTube comment sections for videos on it and people are gushing with praise! Red and black for the core foundation of a color palette is undefeated! Your anime girlfriend always refers to you as "puppy" throughout the playthrough which... feels odd? Does anybody you know call their SO that? I always hear babe, mi amor, muffin, and one unique example of pumpkin amongst my peers My Trophy Path (Part 1) - As recommended through the trophy guide, the best thing you can do for efficiency's sake on your 1st playthrough is play the game on EASY and do not die a single time to achieve "GOD MODE: ON". I recommend making a backup save to the cloud at the end of every stage (the game is super short, stages should take you as long as 15-20 minutes and less than 7 on some occasions). I only died 3 times when playing on easy and 2 of them were because of the first Mother boss fight with the laser (I didn't think to dash around as opposed to her annihilating my shield) as well as right before the final boss when I stupidly sprinted onto the heat pads and didn't realize you needed to destroy some of the power cores to unlock a path. Put all your upgrades into health, dash a lot to avoid damage, and while you'll have a number of close calls, timely glory kills will be the key to gaining health back and survive most fights. After that, play NewGame+. In case this isn't obvious, NewGame+ COUNTS for defeating the game on Hard difficulty. So you knock out a DLC trophy in the process. I'll admit, I died 82 times on my Hard playthrough. No boss fights really kicked my ass. Your health can just vanish in an instance if you get lazy and it was the lengthy wave battle fights that caused me the largest headache. I never died on a stage more than 15 or so times so just stay with it and you'll eventually get it. In terms of trophies to focus on during these playthroughs, on your Easy run, I say just be vigilant about exploring, gets the cats whenever you return to the Rengkok region, and if you miss anything, don't sweat it as NewGame+ carries all your progress over. I DO recommend focusing on certain abilities (hack 50 enemies, burn 420 bodies, 75 shield ram kills, 9001 dashes, etc..) just so you don't have to single-handedly grind them at the end. My Trophy Path (Part 2) - Speaking of the grind, let's talk about two utterly idiotic trophies the developers decided to include. The first of these involves doing 1003 push-ups. Yea, you can make your guy do push-ups in Ruiner by holding down the up button on the D-Pad. This just means you have to hold down a button on your controller for 15 minutes straight. I may have gotten carpal tunnel syndrome but at least I got my trophy! The game also has a trophy for dying 666 times. I died 0 times on easy, 82 times on hard, and around 20 times during my speedrun. This meant I had to spend 30 minutes of my life clicking square and then circle on my PS5 controller at an interval of 3 seconds in order to get the last remaining 500+ deaths. At least the sound of the drone crushing the protagonist was crunchy each time. On a more positive note, let's talk about some trophies I actually enjoyed attaining. The colosseum mode included in the DLC requires you to get through 10 stages on Hard Mode. You can die and only get reset to the latest round you're currently on. That was kind of the developers. It's straightforward once you've completed your Hard Mode playthrough and shouldn't give you too much fuss. Finally, my favorite trophy of the entire game, speedrun mode! Ruiner is AMAZING on speedrun mode. I'd argue it's the actual intended developer experience. Get the nonsense city map out of the way (seriously, why did they include that? You talk to a mechanic and get on your bike and find a few side optional cats but I guess for world-building more than anything as its practical purpose is insanely limited), get the dumb TrafficKing torture outta my way, and just let me GO GO GO through each level. Here are my final stats, you know a game is good when you don't even mind completing it a 3rd time given how brisk it is. I ultimately earned the 10.23% rarity platinum in 2 weeks and 2 hours! Would I recommend Ruiner? I honestly feel comfortable giving this a conservative yes to all players. Naturally, if you're someone who doesn't love the idea of a fast-paced action game with lots of mechanics and levels with frequent combat, Ruiner probably isn't going to sway you. But even though this game isn't going to go down as one of my personal favorites, I can't help but be impressed by the folks over at Reikon who made a niche game that has gained a dedicated following. Their next game, Final Form, has been in development, and while I'm cautious about the change from an isometric viewpoint to FPS... I think this team has clearly displayed that they're talented and with a bit higher budget, can polish off some of the weaker elements of Ruiner in their next title. That's all from me. I am FEELING this South Florida heat. Time to go for a swim. Until next time! Panda Score: 6.73 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 4.24 / 10 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mori Posted July 9, 2023 Share Posted July 9, 2023 (edited) Ruiner has a fantastic soundtrack, it would be a shame if you listen to sth. else while playing :') I'm a bit surprised about the edgy-ness though, never realized that anime-gf was expressing herself in such a way. Anyway, just wanted to thank you for pointing out their next game, I'm looking forward to it. Edited July 9, 2023 by Mori 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted July 9, 2023 Share Posted July 9, 2023 2 hours ago, realm722 said: Game: Ruiner (Action (Complex), Bullet Hell) Yoooo I been sitting on this one for a hot minute, almost slapped it on a few times but something else always won out. Guess I'll have to bump it up the list. Great write-up my dude, you got me looking forward to the speedrun! Well, that and 1 hour ago, Mori said: Ruiner has a fantastic soundtrack, it would be a shame if you listen to sth. else while playing :') I heard the soundtrack is bumpin, that's another reason I copped the game? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted July 10, 2023 Author Share Posted July 10, 2023 On 7/2/2023 at 6:34 PM, breakingthegreen said: Blast from the about 2 week old past, I have just visited my brother and I've got all the folders he's got to me sort games into, I don't know if you'd wanna use any of them realm277, but I think you may like them anyway: (17 pics, I'll put them in the spoiler warning) Just wanted to say thank you for putting all of this together! (and really an even bigger thank you for putting all the images under the spoiler tag, as I am a bit pedantic when it comes to long posts on my thread lol) I finally got around to checking them out and liked a number of the ideas I saw. In terms of specificity, you hit it out of the park. I'm looking for something a little bit more all-encompassing but even a simple title like "Indie Racers" was something that evaded my mind that beautifully describes a number of games that I've played that shouldn't just be defined under racing like Need for Speed, Burnout, The Crew, etc... so thank you! I'm taking a bit of a hiatus from the genre-defining front since it was a bit maddening but thanks to all y'alls wonderfully feedback I'm going to have to plenty to chew on it when I inevitably revisit the subject a few months down the line. 5 hours ago, Mori said: Ruiner has a fantastic soundtrack, it would be a shame if you listen to sth. else while playing :') I'm a bit surprised about the edgy-ness though, never realized that anime-gf was expressing herself in such a way. Yea, I'll admit that when it comes to playing games, soundtracks can be some of my biggest blindspots. I very frequently am listening to other stuff ESPECIALLY if it's a game with a repetitive gameplay loop. Doesn't mean I always ignore them, but sometimes I'll 100% play a game and go online to read stuff about it and all a lot of people talk about is the soundtrack and uhh... yea, missed the wagon on it. I listened to a bit of it while working on some my spreadsheets and it's nice, but much like a lot of the game, not my style hah. Also happy I brought some attention to their next game! It's not until I really got into this organization obsession that I started to care what studios make what games. It sounds dumb, but whenever I used to see a trailer that started with: "from the makers of X" I'd think it'd be cheesy but now I 100% understand given most players DON'T keep track of which studios make their favorite games outside of the REALLY big ones (Naughty Dog, Rockstar, Nintendo, etc...) 4 hours ago, YaManSmevz said: Yoooo I been sitting on this one for a hot minute, almost slapped it on a few times but something else always won out. Guess I'll have to bump it up the list. Great write-up my dude, you got me looking forward to the speedrun! Hope you enjoy it! The more games I play, the more I love ones with snappiness that respect your time and want to get you right back out for for the next attempt. I also have an increasing lack of patience for games that are poorly optimized in this way (cough Golf Club Wasteland cough). I'll look forward to your review! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted July 12, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 12, 2023 What does the term "indie game" honestly mean in 2023? If my pedantic ramblings about genres and playing games from different countries haven't made it nakedly clear to all that I like obsessing over weird stuff, I'll state it plainly. I like obsessing over odd, seemingly insignificant details, mainly within the scope of video games. My latest compulsion has revolved around the sorts of studios that make video games. Let's be honest, in the general public, only two types of studios come up. You're either an indie game OR you're a triple-A game. Small budget vs big budget. David vs Goliath. This has been the case for the last decade or so with the rise of Steam and the ability for inspired developers to publish their own creations without needing to be tied to a larger entity. I've never actually taken a moment to count how many more indie games I've played than AAA titles. I imagine it's more than double. So while I explore these numbers, I'm also going to make an appeal for a third, and possibly even fourth term we should use to describe game studios going forward. Explaining My Methodology - Before anything, I should probably explain how I ultimately deciphered the size of a studio. This wonderful website, MobyGames, is a beautiful video game database that with much support and love from volunteers and a zealous community, has turned into quite a helpful resource. When you look up a game, such as Persona 5, you can see that there are over 700+ people credited for creating the game. That's obviously an AAA title. Meanwhile, something like Dead Cells has 11 professional roles and that's IT. There are obviously many titles that fall between the middle and by describing each of them in detail, I hope to bring some over to my side of the argument for descriptions we use going forward. #1. AAA Games (ex: Final Fantasy VII Remake, all major sports games, & Horizon Forbidden West) Quite easily the simplest type of studio to understand, it's the biggest studios that exist! My mind was boggled when I saw HFW had nearly 3,500 credits... that's insanity. The term is borrowed from the bond rating scale, or at least that's what Wikipedia tells me. These are the games most beloved and maligned by the majority of the gaming public. On one hand, there's an accepted acknowledgment that something inherently brilliant about these games is how jawdroppingly gorgeous they are and how indie teams cannot obviously develop to the same scale of a studio composed of thousands of humans. On the other hand, games, even with all this time, money, marketing, and development, still flop all the bloody time. Nearly 2,000 people worked on Saints Row (2022). Just think about that for a moment. How does that even happen? (For the record, I haven't played the game, so I probably shouldn't dunk on it like that but a paltry score from critics AND users is a damning indictment) I'll now mention some of the more "surprising" AAA games I have listed in my gaming history. Spyro: Reignited Trilogy (1.1k people), Team Sonic Racing (700 people), & Journey (450+ people). The Spyro trilogy in some way makes sense as Toys for Bob is a huge company. Team Sonic Racing surprised me a bit... and the final one I listed there may be a bit controversial, especially since people view Journey as such a small in-scope project. But seriously man. While Jenova Chen runs a fairly small studio, that game had MASSIVE backing from Sony and I think it seems a bit wrong to simply lob it in amongst the other indie titles while acknowledging that fact. #2. Indie Games (ex: The Banner Saga 2, Inscryption, & Paradise Killer) Indie games serve as the yang to AAA's yin. They're becoming ever-popular amongst the gaming community as the public grows cynical with some trends in major games. I'm not gonna say the M-word that ends in actions but you know what I'm talking about. Some also tire of huge giant open worlds and want smaller, more sculpted experiences. I can't exactly fault AAA studios for making these safe, trendy decisions though, so when you have 1,000+ people's employment at stake, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be all that experimental either. It's for this reason why I love indie games. I love the new, different, odd, and peculiar. TBS2 has 84 professional roles, Inscryption has 197 but that's largely because the main creator (Daniel Mullins) went out of his way to credit every individual creator of an asset of theirs that he included in the game. Paradise Killer has 56 professional roles. I mention these numbers to point out: "hey those sound kinda big don't they?" but what needs to be remembered is 56 credits does NOT mean 56 people working around the clock, 9-to-5, 5 days a week on the game. Many of them are voice actors, credits to the publishing team if the indie group acquired one, etc.. I was surprised myself by going through most games and uncovering just how many professional credits are given out even if a studio is composed of less than 15 people actively working around the clock on it. While this wasn't a hard-line rule, I'd say under 100 professional credits or so is what I'd clearly define as indie without much second-guessing the definition. #3. Double-A Games (ex: Hades, Okami HD, & Unravel Two) So you may be asking yourself... huh? What the hell? I've never heard the term "AA Studio" in my life. You wouldn't be wrong! Outside of a small blurb in that same Wikipedia article, I cited, it doesn't really come up. The paragraph lists some examples like PlatinumGames and Obsidian Entertainment but both also feel wrong to me. Bayonetta 3 had 750+ credits. Outer Worlds 600 credits. While they're not Rockstar or Naughty Dog, I say that's lower AAA than AA. So why did I give the 3 games I listed as examples? I'll present decent reasons for all of them, but here's the central issue. It feels kinda wrong to call games made by studios of 40+ people for several years "indie" just like a group of 5-6 dudes making their first game. I know that indie just means "independently developed" but terms evolve over time and I feel like this is a decent as time as any to start pushing for that evolution. Hades is made by Super Giant Games. It has 170 professional credits. That is a damn sizable amount. I feel comfortable, given the fact they had released THREE games with success, to bestow upon them this respectable title. They're no longer indie fledglings. They're a proper, bonafide, AA studio. Yet in my spreadsheet, their first 3 titles(Bastion/Transistor/Pyre) WILL be labeled as indie as that's what they once were. Other studios like Klei Entertainment and Thunder Lotus Games can also receive this honor with their 4th game. I feel like if you can release your 4th video game independently, you graduate to the "AA" honor. Okami HD is listed here because it's old. So is Galaga, Pac-Man, Moon, etc.. they weren't indie. They couldn't be. But they also weren't AAA. Okami may "only" have 124 professional credits but you need to remember that video game credits were way tighter and stricter back then (somewhat unfairly to people who contributed to the game yet didn't work full-time at the studio) AND compared to the biggest release of 2006, GTA: Vice City with 1k+, I feel comfortable giving them the AA title. Same thing with Arcade games that may only have a handful of credits but c'mon, they were created by Capcom! Finally, I have Unravel Two listed as while you could argue they were indie, they were buoyed by EA Originals. Not quite the fully-scale Sony backing to make it AAA-tier, but enough that I don't think it's far to say they're just like any other indie. #4. Auteur Games? (ex: Stardew Valley, Dicey Dungeons, Return of the Obra Dinn) The reason why I include a question mark at the end there is because I myself am doubtful of the term and didn't even bother to categorize the games listed as "auteur" games. But let me make the other side of the argument. In essence, just as it's goofy to say that Hades is an "indie" game like Burly Men at Sea is an "indie" game, shouldn't we also distinguish between a title like The Banner Saga, which is a proper miniature studio, and a game made largely by ONE man? Eric Barone, the creator behind Stardew Valley, worked as the sole designer, programmer, animator, artist, composer, and writer. Lucas Pope for both his games Papers, Please & RotD did all of the design, programming, art & music. In essence, these dudes are built different from anybody else. Yet... I still feel wrong calling them auteur games. In part because I think they themselves would dislike that term. Return of the Obra Dinn still has 59 professional credits, largely due to localization and voice acting. Stardew Valley's is much smaller yet still includes 25+ due to translation help. I'd feel a bit wrong negating the work and effort put forth by these people by labeling the game as "single-handedly crafted by one man" when while LARGELY true, isn't the whole truth. Still, hope it was a neat little thought experiment. Final Thoughts: Well unsurprisingly, I am indeed Indie-obsessed. Though honestly, between AAA and Double-A combined, the gap isn't as large as I thought it would be. I guess sports games and racing games all being from huge development teams narrow the gap quite a fair bit. It's not surprising that AAA averages the best score as I can rarely think of one I've truly disliked. Shoutout to The Last Guardian for tanking that rating all by itself. Difficulty makes sense. I add some points to difficulty due to length and in the least surprising thing ever is how bulky the big boy games can be. It's also why they're the most expensive by a landslide. What I am a bit surprised to see is... despite all of these obvious and evident differences between games from these 3 types, my word count between all of them is essentially negligible. That's... something I wouldn't have guessed. I've written tens of words on FF7R, DQ11, HFW, etc... and yet... less than 130 words of difference. Neat! That's all from me. I hope you've all enjoyed this little detour. We will return to our regularly scheduled indie dissection later this week! 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted July 14, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 14, 2023 Game: Signs of the Sojourner (Deckbuilder, Narrative, Story Alterator) Analysis: I bought this game when it was on sale earlier this week (July 2023) for $7.99. It's still on sale for 60% off as I write this! Why SotS? I'd be lying to you if I told you I remembered where I had first heard of the game. I honestly don't think it was from any recommendation on a Reddit thread or YouTube video. I believe it just largely had to do with the fact I was browsing sales on indie games and stumbled across this one that had a cute aesthetic and a catchy title. Sojourner is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I've already played The Sojourn. But now you're letting me play as a Sojourner? Now you have my attention. I imagine I'm in the shockingly small minority of gamers who makes the bulk of their purchases about games without ever so much as glancing at the gameplay on a YouTube video or Twitch stream. I do this because I need to do this. At the start of my variety gaming playing days, I cannot tell you how many games I talked myself OUT of after watching their gameplay for a bit on YT. It's a bad habit of mine. I need to just commit to something in order to see it all the way through. Let me overthink, and I'd probably never play anything new at all. Thus, you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I looked up the trophy list for the game for the first time and saw multiple cards sprawled out with triangles connecting them. Aw man, this is a card game!?! That's awesome man! I've been wanting to play another since Inscryption! Describing the Gameplay Loop - The game opens up with a very simple and small tutorial featuring you talking with your brother Elias when you're both children. It walks you through some of the very basic principles that will teach you the fundamentals of the gameplay loop. Basically, every character you interact with in SotS has a set of symbols that represent their personality. Circles and triangles tend to be more compassionate, centering around empathy and being diplomatic. The game very quickly helps you realize it's a deckbuilder built around having conversations with people. If you aren't vibing or on the same wavelength, so to speak, with somebody, the conversation isn't going to go anywhere. You're going to fail, and you're not going to uncover what may have been some useful information out of that person. Early on, this will be a breeze. In the first few towns of Bartow, Pachenco, & Bukam Boro, all you'll find are characters with circles and triangles, at least early on. Yet once you read Aldhurst, all of certain you'll have diamonds sprinkled in which reflect creativity and curiosity. Now you've got to add those sorts of cards to your limited, 10-card only deck. Oh, you want to get into Old Marae? Well, I guess you're gonna need at least a few squares (forceful/direct) cards in order to get through! The difficulty in the game comes from juggling all of these different manners of speaking in your deck with the many people found in the world in order to progress the storylines YOU care about on a given playthrough, and man... Oddly Enthralled by the Deckbuilding - I was completely enamored with it. Seriously. This is a game that you should enjoy on your 1st playthrough for the story. 100%. Focus on these characters, give them their attention, but my goodness, when I talk about wanting games to incorporate gameplay mechanics into the narrative-focused games, I think the folks over at Echodog Games didn't realize how much of a home run they hit. Let me name just a few of the elements that fascinate me. Early on, the game will be so easy that I was puzzled as to how "failing" a conversation could even occur unless you were intentionally trying to sabotage the dialogue. The game is incredibly easy in the beginning phase when you only have to worry about two symbols. Yet as soon as you reach Aldhurst, and especially when you reach Old Marae, the game now puts the player in a series of increasingly difficult decisions. In essence, you can't please everyone. One of the game's leading characters, Nadine (who runs the caravan you or can not journey with on most of your trips), tells you this EXPLICITLY early on. "If you try to please everyone, you will please no one." Basically, you need to determine from the get-go which conversations/relationships you want to prioritize. The reason why is that you're never going to have a balanced enough deck in order to "succeed" in conversations if you spread yourself too thin with too many symbols. You may need to win up to 2 or 3 lines of conversations in a row, and if your hand is cluttered with circles, triangles, diamonds, & squares, it can be hard to have the right card if things don't break your way. Stacking the odds in your favor when entering a new city in order to progress with one character very likely means "sacrificing" your odds of success with another in order to gain a few more cards you need of that ilk in order to progress. It May Have Overshadowed the Story - Two mechanics that make the gameplay even more interesting are the following. For one, after every conversation, you are obliged to take at least one of the cards that the person you spoke with played. This is delightfully devilish, developers. It FORCES the player to always make a decision. You can't ever sit back with your perfect deck and be satisfied with conquering the game. At a minimum, 1 of your 10 cards will always be looping and very often you'll start to morph your back towards another set of symbols as you journey through cities or towns that urge that personality trait. The second mechanic is the limited/trips and fatigue system. In Sojourner, you only have 5 trips to do everything. 50 days maximum each trip. That SOUNDS like a lot. It is. You can see and visit all of the towns in the game if you know what you're doing in that timespan. What prevents you from doing everything and succeeding all of the time though is fatigue cards. These are dead cards. They're not useless. They do have a purpose. That is to make you suffer. They clog your hand, limiting your ability to play the cards with symbols you actually want to play. 1-2 fatigue cards isn't a death sentence, with a heavily curated deck, you can overcome this. But once you start reaching, 3, 4, 5+ cards? It is incredibly hard to succeed in conversations because with only 5 cards in your hand at only one time, the numbers will eventually be against you and you'll have no options left BUT to play those dead cards, instantly failing conversations. WOW! Talk about a shockingly deep and intricate system. Did you notice something though? I haven't talked a lick about the story. This is a story game? Yes, it is. I've just been so obsessed with these little symbols that I forgot about the entire reason in the first place why I CARED about having the correct little symbols. It's to make connections with people! (SPOILERS) You see this little boy? He may look innocent at first with his little hoodie and facemask. Little did you know you can start a revolution and set this city ablaze with one of the endings . Everything works out! That's fantasy for ya! My Favorite Character Moments - I am going to rattle off a bunch of the names you'll be seeing on your journey throughout the lands in quick alphabetical order. Airat is a bro who can end up in a variety of cities form Anka to Pachenco. He's aight. His dad called him lazy. Aurora is a b!tch. I'm sorry. I never once succeeded in any of my several playthroughs with befriending her or getting her to open up. She hates refugees. We're all one natural disaster away from becoming one you whore. Deion is cool. He's a fisher bro you meet in Old Marae and always teaching you how to get to the Wave Dancer if you succeed with him. Gull is an a-hole and basically serves as the biggest difficulty spike and progress blocker for trophies in the entire game. Never trust anybody who's life pursuit is being a narc. Haruto and Tosuto are two bickering old brothers that I enjoyed reconciling. They complain about one another across city lines! Isabella is a sweetie. Klaus is a thief you can befriend and run away with it. Marques is a jerk. She always gave me ick energy. Theo has an amazing design and is hella chill. His favorite movie is probably The Big Lebowski. Thunder is best boy. And sadly, I would literally bury every single one of these characters alive if it meant making Tomas happy. Tomas is the most adorable character in the entire game. The way the developer conveyed so much emotion and personality by merely shrinking his text to reflect meekness was sensational. I love him. The game's "story" revolves around the relationships you grow with these folk, some of them leading to endings, some of them not. It's decent and as someone who enjoys character-driven narratives as opposed to plot, it works for me! One final note I'll make in this section is that I felt it noteworthy that I think the developers intentionally left many of the characters without any specified gender. OR at least I couldn't tell them apart. I'd initially think one character was a dude and it was really a girl, and vice versa. I thought it was noteworthy. Can I Get Deep For A Second? - I don't do drugs. I don't do weed. This isn't Realm ranting after taking one puff too heavily. So like... some of the themes of Sojourner really connected with me the more I thought about them. Rhea (the player protagonist) loses a bit of herself as she journeys and I often found myself having trouble relating to Elias (brother who you run your shop with) as your journey throughout the game progresses. Y'all are tight-knit at first, of course. But as the small town homely empathetic person slowly branches out and goes to some of the more direct, stubborn, forceful, difficult places of the world, this person needs to evolve in order to survive out there. They take on some of that edge, some of that coldness. When you come back home, you lack the ability to connect with what you once had with that new, hardened shell. Who amongst us has not responded nastily to a family member after being exhausted from a long day at work and later regretted it? The game perfectly embodies that sort of scenario with the fatigue system when you get back home after 50 days of juggling symbols trying to succeed and now Elias wants to have a chat and you've got nothing left to give with 8 dead cards in your stack and communication is at an all-time zero. I also feel like there's something profound in the mandatory take-one-card from every person you speak to mechanic. Obviously, this is included to influence gameplay. But I can't help but think on a more profound level, it's symbolic about life. Don't we all take away a little bit from everybody we encounter on a day-to-day basis, for better or for worse? I'm sorry. I'll stop the hippie bullshit. I just wanted to get it off my chest as these sorta thoughts genuinely ran through my mind while playing. So Much That Doesn't Matter Sadly - I feel a bit odd finally getting to this point in the review and not bringing up until now some of the elements that befuddle me but I guess now is as good a time as any. Basically, there's a lot of stuff in this game that feels like it'll be important, but it isn't. I'll list off a few examples. 1) Why do you care about getting items from the store? Whenever you succeed at a conversation with someone in the world, they may give you an item. This is good, you're a store vendor. It's something else to sell. Yet, very early on I realized that... there's not much purpose in selling stuff at the end of each trip. There's no currency. You just get a brief bubble if it's been sold and that's it. I think you could go the entire game without selling anything and be fine. 2) Your relationships with Elias & Nadine kinda don't matter? I was a complete jerk to Elias far too frequently, often unintentionally. I couldn't proceed in conversations with him at the end of trips due to so much fatigue. Yet I also often failed to make it back on time for his performance (Trip 2), or get him any scrap metal (Trip 4). He just kinda sucked it up and kept putting up with me which... I guess is kinda reflective of a lot of sibling relationships? Nadine who runs the caravan isn't somebody you really need to maintain rapport with. You can ignore the caravan after Trip 1 and do your own thing if you want. 3) A lot of the card's special abilities. This is a bit unfair. These DO have a purpose. Very often, I underestimated them and a smarter, savvier deckbuilding player could probably come up with an amazing deck with no flaws or weaknesses that work beautifully synergy-wise. I didn't do any of that. Accord is the only one that really mattered to me because it lets you flip up the style of conversation if you're running low on a certain type. Elaborate is decent, reconsider is nice if you have a bunch of fatigues, clarify & backtrack could also be decent in a jiffy. On second thought, I guess what I really mean to say is observe is a useless card ability. 4) The Cataclysm and Trip 4. This is a bit mean to include in this section. Basically, an earthquake happens, and this causes a lot of characters in the game to earn a brand new 5th emotion, "grieving or distressed" reflected by a perplexing pink spiral. This is the difficulty spike in the game. If you don't have 1-2 pinks in your deck, you're probably going to fail a lot. On my 1st run, it felt like a wack difficulty spike. On later runs, knowing it was coming, I could at least prepare mentally. A lot of the game's ending sequence events are triggered here so it's an important event and I get why the developers included it or else trips 2-5 would all feel the same but I'd be lying if I said it didn't blindside me and felt unfair on my first attempt. (Holy crap, another emotion that perfectly reflects the feeling of being hit by a natural disaster in real lif- I'll shut up) My Trophy Guide Path (Part 1) - Signs of the Sojourner is not a very popular game on PlayStation. As of the time that I write this, the NA trophy list only has 54 owners and I am just the 5th platinum achiever to date. That'd be pretty slow for a game that was released last week. This game has been available on consoles for over 2 years, releasing back in March 2021. With shockingly little trophy guide aid, I have to give a humongous shoutout to @Vwt277227 and @PMD_E1337Pete for their AMAZING and descriptive help on this thread. I would have PROBABLY been able to bash my head against the wall and figure out most trophies given the brevity of the game but they made the game so much easier. With only 14 trophies to worry about, I was able to hone in on what I wanted to accomplish each run. Here are my quick tips. 1) On your 1st run, don't worry about trophies at all. Seriously. This game is super short once you know what you're doing. Take your time on the journey. Enjoy it. Then enter trophy goblin mode. I promise you, you won't sacrifice a lot of time playing this way. 2) From then on, start trying to go for Caraveneer on every run from then onward. There's a progress checkpoint in Old Marae that can kick your butt if you don't have a timely square or two to help you out. Nadine at the start of Trip 2 and the Stranger can help immensely with this but you need to get a bit lucky. Don't be me. I saved this for last. Wasted two runs trying to reload and it was all in vain. Also don't be me since I thought this trophy meant visiting EVERY location in a single playthrough. Read the damn trophy descriptions. My Trophy Guide Path (Part 2) - 3) Start focusing on trophies revolving around certain relationships. There's no real perfect formula to this in my mind. I honestly did whichever ones came naturally to me that I was progressing. I stumbled into the Klaus ending by just pursuing her accidentally until towards the end I realized how viable it'd be to actually go for it. I made a few timely Cloud saves so I could go back and snag another trophy or two before wiping my save clean. 4) The game has diversity for unlocking locations. On one run, I unlocked Hara through Isabella. On another, through Marques. I unlocked Persarrey NEVER from Aurora (that witch) and always from Haruto or XN-220 in Rimina. I almost always unlocked Long Gate from Theo (though you can unlock it through Big Basilio). Basically, be friendly and try to succeed in conversations with everyone and you'll be surprised by the different avenues the game provides for success. I really like the fairly simple trophy list the game provides and I think it's better served for its trophy list as opposed to if it had 40+ achievements to collect. All in all, I earned the 7.41% rarity platinum in 3 days and 5 minutes! Would I recommend Signs of the Sojourner? If you enjoy deckbuilders, absolutely. I had no idea what to expect from the game when I first booted it up and I have to admit I've come away pleasantly surprised from the experience. I should preface that if I hadn't found the collecting and swapping of symbols to be so enjoyable, I wouldn't have enjoyed it so much. I got a bit hyper-obsessed with it and would be lying if I didn't admit that. I can see how someone could get frustrated with the give-and-go of the gameplay loop. But man... the game just works. It has got good music. The chime that is created when you successfully complete a conversation sequence is MAGNIFICENT. The visuals only add to this effect. I can't believe I'm a card gamer. I really am going to have to give Griftlands a go eventually. Panda Score: 7.11 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 3.88 / 10 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted August 1, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 1, 2023 (edited) Game: Endling (Survival) Analysis: I did not buy Endling. Rather I acquired it for free as it was available for PS+ Users during the month of July 2023! Why Endling? This is the shockingly rare PS+ Game I actually complete the very month it releases for all subscribers. There's a very simple reason for that. Between many vacations and just not having that much time to play lengthier games, I needed a quickie to finish out July to fulfill my quota of 4 games completed per month. I could have gone into the vault from a number of my titles within my backlog that I could have churned through but saw that Endling, a game Cassy reviewed and after having finished said "let me go play a happier game, like Heavy Rain." That was enough to pique my interest and play it for myself. As an aside, I decided to investigate a bit and see how many PS+ titles I actually played the month they become available. 2023? (1, Endling). 2022? (1, FIFA 22) 2021? (1, PGA Tour 2k21) 2020? (0). That all sounds about right. I do eventually get to many of the games just... in my own time... after hundreds to thousands of other users decide to go through the same experience and delightfully layout the recommended path to obtain the platinum. There will be (SPOILERS) from the 3rd paragraph onward. Mama Fox Helps Baby Foxes - The core element at both the narrative and mechanical loops of Endling are the simple fact that you are a mother fox who must take care and nurture the health of hey baby foxes in an ever-precarious and changing landscape. By far your most urgent need will be food. Every night, for 30 consecutive nights, you need to make sure your babies are well-fed and thriving. This involves exploring areas that pose their own risks. Whether it be traps (which don't actually do any long-term damage but just make walking agonizingly slow), other animals (like owls who will be a*holes if you accidentally wake them up, though to be honest, I'm an a-hole when woken up so game recognize game), or awful, selfish, disgusting HUMANS ruining the environment. All in all, this shouldn't give you too much trouble. If it does, just quit to the main menu and you'll start from the start of the night all over again! Food also won't be too troublesome. There are small creatures, berries, trash, and a plethora of other goods to find. I never found my meter really go below 50% outside of a handful of times. The game is very well depicted and animated. Many of the interactions are cute and your pups are adorable. Despite the initially... odd pathing in the game (you only ever move left to right but can go up and down to access new areas so you're not always moving in a circle), you eventually get familiar with your surroundings and the game also provides a helpful map in case you get lost. Not Enough Gameplay Depth - Where Endling takes the biggest hit for me is... after the initial desperation and newness of trying to survive and get by as this mother fox with her cubs, you'll quickly realize the game struggles to offer much else in the form of things to actually focus on. You got food? Okay. Now follow these purple scents and pick-up narrative bits about this lost 4th baby fox that has been missing since the very start of the game. Oh. You had fun with that? Well get ready to do that like 12 MORE TIMES during your playthrough (I'm not joking, it's the same loop every time. Follow the purple scent. Smell object. Do it two more times. Return to base). It just got repetitive, and that's almost impressive for a game as short as this to pull that off. Nights only last a handful of minutes and despite that fact, I found myself drudging towards the finale as the risk of life/death was removed and I knew how to get food quite easily. Feels like the game needed 1-2 more things for you to keep juggling to actually keep you on your heels, and since it didn't, I entered the emotional impact of the finale a bit flat. My Trophy Experience - It's that time of the review when I need to get on my soap box and wax poetic about our glorious trophy guide creators that make trophy hunting a leisurely experience rather than a hair-pulling one. Shoutout to @IBadDriverI for his magnificent 1-hour and 40-minute platinum guide video on YouTube. I think if there was ever a school about how to make a perfect trophy guide walkthrough, that video should surve as the textbook the class is based on. 1) The entire footage is shown with no inexplicable cuts. Don't you hate it when you're looking for collectibles and the guide creator randomly cuts and doesn't show you how he got to the location? Maybe at best he'll show you where he is on the map but I prefer to get the WHOLE experience, no cuts! 2) I love commentary by the creator during the guide voicing instructions. I understand why most people DON'T do this. They don't want to record their voice. I get it. I absolutely despise the sound of my own voice. The idea of having to edit my voice in a video is... horrifying. But for those who don't mind, it's amazing. I can actually follow instructions just by voice, not by sight, and it means I can keep up much more easily. Plus, I feel like I'm earning the plat with a buddy! The actual difficulty of the game is pretty minimal. There's tons of food. Even if you die, you just reset from the start of the day. Get all the various food types, the odd skills for your cubs, and you'll earn the 35.88% rarity platinum in 3 hours and 5 minutes just like I did! A Side Tangent on Crying from Media - (END GAME SPOILERS) Unsurprisingly y'all, the mama fox does not make it to the end. Even after you recover your 4th cub, survive a flood, get drifted away, and try to make it back into the forest from the desert, you get shot in the ass and die despite the aid from these little babies you've helped mature over the last month. This is as textbook a waterworks finale as you can ask for and uhh... yea, I didn't cry. It was sad. No question. But no tears. That's not even an indictment against Endling. Media in general doesn't make me cry. I am laughing from the sheer notion of a video game making me cry. The CLOSEST I've ever come was (actually let me not put that here, check the spoiler at the bottom of this post. It's a TwD spoiler). But even then, I didn't cry. Movies don't make me cry. The closest I've come on that front is 50/50 & Coco (because of the grandmother) and I've seen A LOT of sad movies. Books don't make me cry. I've written some pretty soul-wrenching letters to loved ones in my day and while they make me emotional, I don't get pushed over the waterfall cliff into tears. I say all this not to say "LOOK AT ME I DON'T CRY". I actually cry. A fair amount. But like... from life. Never media. Does anyone else experience this? Because I always feel like a bit of a freak when people talk about how much something made them cry and I just can't relate. Life stuff? Yea. Media? Absolutely not. Would I recommend Endling? Eh, maybe. I don't think you're missing out on some unforgettable experience if you decide to pass it up. On the other hand, it's also so relatively short that I think you can knock it out in a single evening or afternoon just to say you've played it. As soon as the credits started rolling, I started seeing a bunch of Spanish names and said: "oh yea this studio has definitely gotta be from Spain." and lo and behold, Herobeat Studios are indeed based in Barcelona! So if you'd like to add a Spanish studio to your repertoire, also check it out! That's all from me. Time to keep building some [REDCATED] and listening to that new Travis... Panda Score: 6.34 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.28 / 10 Spoiler The Walking Dead Season 1 Spoilers (the Video Game) - Clementine having to shoot Lee in the face Edited August 1, 2023 by realm722 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted August 2, 2023 Share Posted August 2, 2023 I was initially very excited when I heard about Endling coming to PS+ Catalog, but the repetitiveness of the gameplay has greatly dimmed my enthusiasm for the game. Now it's probably something that I will eventually tackle when I'm looking for a short plat-in-an-afternoon game after playing a 100h game or something. On 7/31/2023 at 9:42 PM, realm722 said: I am laughing from the sheer notion of a video game making me cry. The CLOSEST I've ever come was (actually let me not put that here, check the spoiler at the bottom of this post. It's a TwD spoiler). But even then, I didn't cry. Movies don't make me cry. The closest I've come on that front is 50/50 & Coco (because of the grandmother) and I've seen A LOT of sad movies. Books don't make me cry. I've written some pretty soul-wrenching letters to loved ones in my day and while they make me emotional, I don't get pushed over the waterfall cliff into tears. I say all this not to say "LOOK AT ME I DON'T CRY". I actually cry. A fair amount. But like... from life. Never media. Does anyone else experience this? Because I always feel like a bit of a freak when people talk about how much something made them cry and I just can't relate. Life stuff? Yea. Media? Absolutely not. I'm also in the apparently-minority group of people who doesn't cry from emotional movies and video games. It definitely makes me feel awkward sometimes, especially since some people think I'm just lying out of embarrassment or something because how could a woman not cry at sad movies(!). Sure, sad movies have their sad moments, and there are a handful crafted well enough to actually make me feel sorrow, but with only one exception in three decades I've not been brought to tears from the emotion. That exception is Studio Ghibli's Graveyard of the Fireflies - a movie that follows two Japanese war orphan siblings during World War II. I've watched a lot of movies set in WWII, documentaries about the atrocities of WWII, etc., but what got me in this movie is that I related a lot to 14-year-old protagonist Seita taking care of his 4-year-old Setsuko. There is a similar age gap between myself and my younger sister, who I feel I partially helped to raise, so the ending really hit me emotionally. I find it even more challenging to get a strong emotional feeling from a videogame, mainly due to the very nature of the medium where the developers cannot fully control your experience. Even in a linear story-driven game, if there is a heavy emotional scene and then a small breather before the next scene, the devs have no control over whether it takes me 5 minutes or 15 minutes to complete the small breather. Maybe I pause the game during the breather and get a snack, or get up to use the bathroom. Taking even a minute break from a game means that one's mind is temporarily thinking about something else, and so the emotions from the game take a back seat for a moment, thus dampening their impact on oneself. That doesn't make it impossible for a videogame to elicit a strong emotional response out of me, just much more difficult than a movie where the director has complete control over the pacing of events (and I'm much less likely to pause a movie, or unable to at all if I'm in a theater). I've never cried from a video game, but two that instantly come to mind for eliciting a strong emotional reaction from me are The Last of Us and NieR: Automata. This has actually inspired me to write a post in my cabinet about the games that have done this for me, so cheers! Anyways, this is all to say that I can definitely relate to feeling like an outsider in those types of situations. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 4, 2023 Author Share Posted August 4, 2023 Game: Never Alone (2D Platformer / Puzzle) Analysis: I bought the game when it was on sale for $2.24 in December 2022 and the Foxtales DLC when it went on sale for $0.79 in February 2023. Why Never Alone? It's the start of yet another month which means it was time to play another 100%. I started scrolling through my backlog. I bought FAR: Lone Sails because both @Cassylvania and @Briste spoke fairly highly about the game in their respective threads. But since I'm kind of in the weeds at the moment with an ultra-rare plat I didn't wanna take a few days away to focus on another game so I passed up on it. Two other 100%'s that I have in the holster included Momodora (which is a really fun word to say) and Broforce. But unfortunately, as with FAR: Lone Sails, I felt like they'd take too much time despite their brevity away from the game I'm honing in on. I dug deep into the backlog and said: "oh yea there's that game with the girl and the fox I could play". The 100% completion times were within 2-3 hours. Perfect! Time for me to see what a studio in Anchorage, Alaska could produce! The Paragraph Where I Say Nice Things - If I had to put on my Toxic Positivity Hat™, the aspect I would most want to praise about Never Alone has very little to do with the game itself. The game actually has a collectible in the form of "Cultural Insights" which are collected when finding any number of owls on a given level. Most of them are encountered naturally but there are a rare few you could accidentally bypass or miss if you aren't diligently searching out the game's rare view optional paths while playing. These insights have relatively little to do with the in-game narrative and rather focus on the life and culture of people in Alaska. They're remarkably brief, never lasting more than a minute or two. If you're curious about what some of them look like, you can check out this YouTube playlist that has them in neat and tidy order. As someone who lives in South Florida and has grown up with Hispanic culture, it's nice to learn about some cultures that live in drastically opposite conditions to my own. Aside from that, the game has some cute animations, and if you're an animal lover, the game will undoubtedly pull at some hearstrings. This Game Is Fox Water - Now that we've gotten the pleasantries out of the way, holy crap y'all, this is a bad video game. It's not unforgivably bad. Sometimes I feel like I read someone finally play a bad game in their life and it reads purposefully overexaggerated to the point of being grating. How bad could it really be, man? I will not be requesting any voluntary lobotomies. But sheesh man, I know the game was originally released in 2014 which is going to make it nearly a damn decade old at this point (oh god) but it's not... any fun to play. You play as the girl and the little fox. You click the triangle to alternate between the two. In most sections, you need to balance the usage of both to progress or find the solution to a puzzle. The issue is, the all-important "game feel" is absolutely atrocious. Everything feels clunky. I'll give one small example. When you leap in this game, if your character is facing to the left, if you jump while facing left, your character is incapable of turning in mid-air to grasp for the ledge you're aiming for on the right. That sounds like a very small issue relatively. But it isn't. It makes the game feel lethargic. Like I'm controlling two Boeing 747's who need 3 miles of runway in order to properly reach their intended destination. As the girl, you also have a "bola" which you need to use to fire at certain obstacles and glowing white orbs in order to convert them into platforms and for whatever reason they let this be really flexible where you aim and fire with the same left stick and it just... it feels bad. I'm not even going to get into the abysmal floaty controls of the fox trying to pull things in the latter chapters. (SPOILER ALERT) The fox dies. After it dies, the fox is now a boy in the sky. The boy in the sky can fly. You help the girl with the flying white fox boy and it somehow feels even worse than anything in the game prior to it. The Most Exasperating Sensation - I'm going to describe a certain feeling I've had in this game, and I've had in other games, that I don't think I've ever seen described so I'm going to try really hard in this paragraph to accurately convey it and hope I'm not alone in feeling it. When you're playing a game like this, one that is generally not that good and has some questionable controls and physics, do you ever run into sections where you keep dying over, and over again, not because of any actual difficulty, but because the game is so poorly crafted that it almost becomes a comedy skit at how many times you'll fail over and over again? Everything feels slow. The movement, the simple act of getting your character from point A to point B, is painstaking. I know that when it happens to me, I start to literally shift in my office chair that I play in (never buy a gaming chair, folks). I start getting remarkably uneasy. Remember, THIS ISN'T DIFFICULT. When something is difficult, it'll at the very least command my attention. This is more like child's play where you need to wait for the girl in the televison to do the thing that you already know you need to do but due to the cosmically atrocious programming, that seemingly simple act now feels like a slot machine where you need the stupid pachinko ball to land on black. This Game (Somehow) Has DLC - Once I had conquered the agonizing mountain that was the base game, I then had some bonus levels to enjoy! Somehow, the creators managed to justify DLC for this sub-2-hour adventure. It's... more of the same. But now the enemy is a big rat and there's also a cute little squirrel you're trying to help as well! Thankfully, the DLC can all be completed in like 40 minutes which is somehow nearly like half of the base game's run-time so I think pound for pound, this is the biggest DLC I've ever purchased in relative size when comparing how much play-time is added on top of the base game. All for less than 80 cents! Talk about a steal! Would I recommend Never Alone? No. I would not recommend this game. I think you can get the vast majority of what I found "good" about the game by simply watching the YouTube playlist I linked above. In terms of meaningful gameplay interaction, there's remarkably little here that I actually enjoyed. I decided to go look up some review scores of the game for when it released back in 2014. Metacritic seems pretty reasonable. While those are higher ratings than what I'd give it, I have to remember how much indie gaming has progressed over the last decade. People will also give higher scores for a unique setting and cute visuals. There is something novel about the developers and the circumstances they come from. But then I read this Eurogamer review. A genuine, unabashed 10/10? I'm going to go and take a walk. I understand games mean different things to different people. But... good lord. I'll finish here since I feel bad for punching down on a game that was made with love. They announced a sequel. Incredible, 8 years after their initial release, and with all that time in the lab cooking up with their team's entire imaginative brain power the best they could cook up with is a bloody sequel. I'm sorry. I'll stop now. I earned the 4.89% rarity 100% in 3 hours and 20 minutes. YA DUN! Panda Score: 4.91 / 10 Panda Difficulty: 2.22 / 10 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted August 4, 2023 Share Posted August 4, 2023 Next up on the chopping block: Spirit of the North, Seasons After Fall, Okami, The First Tree, and Tunic. Gotta play all the fox games! I feel bad for little Inuit girl and her furry companion. I remember thinking it was a slightly below average platformer, but it didn't fill me with seething hatred. Pumped for the Planet Coaster review. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted August 4, 2023 Share Posted August 4, 2023 5 hours ago, realm722 said: It's interesting to read a review of a game that I only have faint memories of! I initially played the game in 2015 and then felt obligated to complete the DLC in 2016 to maintain my 100%, haha. I thought it was really awesome that the game developers worked with indigenous tribe members to preserve parts of their language and culture, and so I appreciated that the Cultural Insights were included as part of the game. I also recall that the platforming controls were not the best, but I probably mentally gave it a pass at the time because of indie studio expectations back then, as you referenced. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 5, 2023 Author Share Posted August 5, 2023 On 8/2/2023 at 6:24 PM, pelagia14 said: I'm also in the apparently-minority group of people who doesn't cry from emotional movies and video games. It definitely makes me feel awkward sometimes, especially since some people think I'm just lying out of embarrassment or something because how could a woman not cry at sad movies(!). Sure, sad movies have their sad moments, and there are a handful crafted well enough to actually make me feel sorrow, but with only one exception in three decades I've not been brought to tears from the emotion. Yea... that's a unique perspective I hadn't thought about. "Oh you're lying about not crying from the movie!" But homie... who here thinks crying is a "bad" thing that they would wish others think they didn't when they did? Maybe 20+ years ago that'd be something people would do but I think we're past that by this point. 18 hours ago, Cassylvania said: Next up on the chopping block: Spirit of the North, Seasons After Fall, Okami, The First Tree, and Tunic. Gotta play all the fox games! Okami is hands down the best of that bunch. The First Tree was fine. Tunic seemed hella convoluted with that map but it has a 40%+ plat rate. Something in my soul makes me feel like it could come to PS+ Users one day. We'll see. Spirit of the North & Seasons After Fall blend together for me and both strike me as definitive 6/10's where I struggle to find much to say. Holy crap. There really are a lot of games about foxes yea? 18 hours ago, Cassylvania said: Pumped for the Planet Coaster review. I'm kinda pumped to write it. Hadn't played a game even vaguely similar in well over a year! 16 hours ago, pelagia14 said: I thought it was really awesome that the game developers worked with indigenous tribe members to preserve parts of their language and culture, and so I appreciated that the Cultural Insights were included as part of the game. I also recall that the platforming controls were not the best, but I probably mentally gave it a pass at the time because of indie studio expectations back then, as you referenced. Maybe I was too harsh in the review. It's definitely not good. But apart from 4-5 sections, I got through it quickly all on my first attempt. I played it late at night and was rushing to finish it because I needed to go to bed so that probably added to my exasperation. On another night I just give it a 5.5 and call it a day. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelagia14 Posted August 6, 2023 Share Posted August 6, 2023 On 8/4/2023 at 2:55 PM, Cassylvania said: Next up on the chopping block: Spirit of the North, Seasons After Fall, Okami, The First Tree, and Tunic. Gotta play all the fox games! I feel bad for little Inuit girl and her furry companion. I remember thinking it was a slightly below average platformer, but it didn't fill me with seething hatred. Pumped for the Planet Coaster review. FYI, in Ōkami you play as a wolf goddess, not a fox. ? Though there is a fox character in the game! Gosh, it's wild to think that the game was first released in 2006... 12 hours ago, realm722 said: Yea... that's a unique perspective I hadn't thought about. "Oh you're lying about not crying from the movie!" But homie... who here thinks crying is a "bad" thing that they would wish others think they didn't when they did? Maybe 20+ years ago that'd be something people would do but I think we're past that by this point. It's totally bizarre! Part of me wonders if it is people just not being able to understand that it's possible for someone to have a different reaction to (a piece of media) compared to their own reaction. 12 hours ago, realm722 said: Maybe I was too harsh in the review. It's definitely not good. But apart from 4-5 sections, I got through it quickly all on my first attempt. I played it late at night and was rushing to finish it because I needed to go to bed so that probably added to my exasperation. On another night I just give it a 5.5 and call it a day. That definitely makes sense! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 7, 2023 Author Share Posted August 7, 2023 Travis Scott is the "Great Gameplay, Bad Story" of Music Somehow, I think I've managed to create a thread with nearly 700 replies over the course of 6 years without ever mentioning my music preferences. I think this has ultimately been a wise decision. Lots of people hug their music preferences quite closely to their chest. Being critical or dismissive of the music someone loves is a great way to get on the fast track of being disliked. Hell, just mentioning your OWN music preferences could already put some people off from liking you. But enough about being vague. What music do I love and listen to on a daily basis? The king at the moment is the man in the image above. The 32-year-old Houston rapper who burst onto the scene with Rodeo, followed it up with Birds in the Trap(which most people don't care for and view as his worst record but that album is catchy as hell and still sticks with me), the wickedly commercially acclaimed Astroworld (which brought him into mainstream widespread appeal), and of course his latest album, Utopia, which I have been listening to for damn near every day since it released around a week and a half ago. I'm not gonna be a poser and pretend I've been on since the very beginning. I jumped on when Astroworld began to pick up some steam, loved it, went back and listened to his old discography, loved it, and have been on the bandwagon ever since eagerly awaiting his 4th album drop. Of course, anyone with even some vague knowledge of the music industry probably knows what I'm going to bring up now. The AstroWorld Festival tragedy. One of the worst incidents in terms of recent music festival history, over 300 people were injured and 10 young people lost their lives in the accident. Travis received a great amount of scorn for apparently doing very little to pause the concert to assist the ambulance and emergency staff rushing into to try and help victims of the crowd rush. Twitter flooded with tons of videos showing other artists stopping shows when it appeared members of the crowd or even individuals were in distress. He received further ridicule for the paltry apology afterward. There were some hate campaigns online. All in all, since then, in June 2023 a grand jury refused to indict of any criminal charges. Live Nation, the group that organized the event has been heavily criticized due to their lackluster safety procedures which contributed to the event. I mention all this because you can't really talk about Travis at this point without mentioning it. Some people still hate him for it. I don't really have energy to hate people. A lot of online hatred is not even knowing or caring about somebody's existence until they do something and then you can pile on. (See: the Lizzo hate train that formed this past week). I don't know Lizzo. Haven't really listened to her music. Haven't read the article or anything summarizing the lawsuit. So I'm just gonna stay quiet cuz I don't know any better. As for the Travis incident, I'd be lying if I said it put me off from his music. I still listen to old Kanye despite the fact he's gone off the deep end. Yet somehow, all his antics have made me still not even bother listening to Donda even after the hype train it had with it being released. Maybe because I've fallen out of love with his sound and style compared to pre-Yeezus. But let's get to the reason for the title of this article. What the hell does that even mean? Well, I've written some posts in the past about how generally bad I think most video game stories are. It's to the point where I play most games expecting the story to serve as texturing and flavoring at best as opposed to being the driving force behind my experience. Large amounts of my enjoyment come from character interactions, atmosphere, vibes, and the all-important gameplay. If the gameplay's amazing, even if the story is TRASH, I'm probably going to love the game. Dead Cells & Furi are some examples of this. Hell, if you wanted to argue they didn't even have "stories" and they're merely there as an excuse to facilitate the action combat that the developers wanted, I'll grant you that every day of the week. Travis Scott is the "great gameplay, nonexistent story" of the music industry. When I listen to Travis' music, especially since Rodeo, I cannot think of a single poignant song or any lyric with a meaningful purpose. I can recite A LOT of lyrics due to the amount I've played them back. But in terms of purposefulness? I think his Rodeo song, Pray 4 Love, has a higher volume of an actual message than any of his entire 3 albums COMBINED since then. Song Link Man, I can't take no more of this lifestyle we been living Man, I can't take no more of the white powers in position Gotta grab up J-Will, gotta scoop up J-Rich Told Chase we ain't going back, you know we gotta hitch I mean, I'm aggravated, agitated, I admit Intoxicated, animated, got me feeling kinda lit Contemplating fornicating, might as well fuck up some shit They looking at me way too crazy, got me feeling communist & Tired of seein' these black kids on the face of FOX (Oh-oh) And fuck CNN, they don't wanna see us win (Say it loud) Ever since then, Travis' actual message has been... remarkably small. It still sounds utterly incredible. Seriously. I have been non-stop jamming out to Utopia. Favorite Songs: Sirens (after the intro, got me feeling like I'm galloping on a horse in an old Western movie), LOOOVE (they love how the disc rock, they lovin' the Jac goddamn), HYAENA (write a story about myself like I'm Chelsea Handler or write a show about my bitches like I'm Kelsey Grammer), Thank God (the rhythmic chimes at the start and the way he transcends towards the end), Meltdown (club ain't been the same since we lost Mercedes), I Know ? (slow start, fast as hell finish), Circus Maximus (Travis' version of Kanye's Black Skinhead), Modern Jam (Teezo absolutely going full Dave Chappelle Rick James at the end) Yet I acknowledge nothing that appeals to me about Travis and makes him my favorite contemporary artist is anything the man says lyrically. Hell, I don't really know the dude as a person. He doesn't do interviews. He doesn't really do any purposeful social media. There's the utterly iconic chemistry vacant video he has with the MOTHER OF HIS CHILD that has people in the comments hysterical. I've never cared about the dude, I've never cared about the lyrics or what he has to say, it's the pure rhythm, the beats, the vibes, that make him the greatest for me at the moment and I can't think of a better way to describe it than a video game where the story may as well have been written by a kindergartner yet the gameplay would make PlatinumGames developers weep. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 8, 2023 Author Share Posted August 8, 2023 To Play Baldur's Gate 3 OR Not To Play Baldur's Gate 3? Hey everybody, I don't know if you've heard about this game or not, but apparently, this little-known indie title is starting to make some waves in the gaming community. I mean, i say that, because I haven't been able to scroll Twitter for more than a minute without having somebody mention something about the game whether it be the fact that it's currently Steam's #2 Most Played just behind CS:GO which if you know anything about Steam is... bloody mindboggling. The game is currently being praised to a degree that I haven't seen in quite some time. On r/Gaming, this simple, understandable pop-up by the developer, Larian Studios, mentioning why the game doesn't have any microtransactions, has over 66k upvotes. The collective circlejerk around this game for this inclusion has made it the standout example people are using to dunk on every other developer. If you go to the game's Steam reviews, good luck finding a single one that doesn't make some reference to "Ubisoft" or "EA" or "Blizzard" or resoundingly denounce the rest of the game developing landscape for not making this particular game. You know a game has hit a special stratosphere when I'm bloody writing about it despite not having played it. The last time I did this was with Genshin Impact. Oh no. That was nearly two years ago and because of that post, I single-handedly drained @Cassylvania of several hundreds of dollars hours of their life. I feel like these posts are the equivalent of that movie where people have the time on their arms about how much time they have left alive and every time I make a post like this, Justin Timberlake breaks into Cassy's home and drains a few hundred more off the clock. In all seriousness, the hype has reached far and wide, it's even hit me directly. I've managed to do a good job of resisting the hype in the past. I nearly bought No Man's Sky for a full $60 at release. Yet I resisted, and am thankful for doing so. The same nearly happened for Cyberpunk2077 which I thought was going to "break video games" for All-Time. In a way, it kinda did. The latest hype train that nearly ran me over was Final Fantasy XVI. Ultimately, I didn't buy it. I saw Joseph Anderson stream it instead. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't buy it and instead enjoyed of it what I could as a viewer. Yet here has come along yet another game trying to dig its claws into me... let's review the pros and cons. The Arguments for Playing BG3 - 1) I've never played a CRPG. Whether it be the Pillars of Eternity Franchise or those Planescape games, I can say personally that I have never dabbled in the genre. While I may dispute the name under official genre classification (we hate the term RPG around here in case you're new), it'd undoubtedly be one hell of a time to dip my toe into the vast waters that are its history. I imagine I'm hardly the only one who has been sucked in and I have no doubt I'd have A LOT to say about it. 2) These games don't come around often. Lemme tell you, I've heard of Larian Studios before. Their previous game, Divinity Original Sin II, I first discovered when one of my favorite (now retired) YouTubers/Streamers made a series on it. He didn't play the game "normally". Instead, he played it in a permadeath role as "Sallazahar the Art Thief" and role-played in its vast world. Let me tell you, it's one of my favorite and most hilarious YouTube series I've ever seen in my life. I still remember him mimicking the voice of a famed character "Jahan" and saying "mi casa es su casa" only for him to accidentally trespass and get ANNIHILATED by a character around 30 levels higher than himself ending the run. The role-play of that series sticks with me to this day and that's something this game has a unique ability to offer. 3) It'd be fun to finally play a game while it's HOT and being talked about it. I never play games when they're "in the zeitgeist". I typically get around to them at the earliest a year or two later. 4) This game of all games is better experienced than watched due to the role-playing ability and turn-based combat. The Arguments Against Playing BG3 - 1) The absolute black hole this would create around my gaming calendar. It's unsurprising that a game like this is projected to be at around 80+ hours for a full play through. That's gargantuan in its own right but when you consider how I like to play a minimum of 4 titles per month, I'm either having to squeeze in 3 tiny ass games in order to facilitate everything around BG3 or punt on a variety for a few months in order to bask in the game's world. I'm hesitant to do that because I do enjoy playing an array of titles and struggle to switch back and forth once I'm invested. 2) I'm scared it's not gonna live up to the hype. How could that be? It's receiving both critical and mass acclaim! Yea... but man... it's the way people talk about the game. When something is a cheerleader or poster for something because it represents the opposite of what they hate, sometimes people become rather silent to a game's own shortcomings. I'm hesitant about how it could feel bloated or I could check out of lengthy dialogue sequences. I'm worried I'm gonna be overwhelmed by the menus and vast options. I'm worried that turn-based combat is gonna be slow or so unbalanced that it's either a no-contest or laborious. 3) We'll know soon enough, but the platinum is probably going to be a nightmare. The trophy list hasn't been released yet but if DS2 is anything to go by, MULTIPLE playthroughs would be a death sentence for me. The Final Verdict - To Be Decided. if I had to lean anywhere, I'd lean towards no. I still have time to be swayed in the opposite direction. The game is projected to come to PlayStation 5 on September 6th. The momentum and hype built up from the PC release currently has it has the #1 most wish-listed game on the PS Store. I'm happy for Larian Studios. They deserve their success and I hope the game really is as brilliant and magnificent as everyone has billed it up to be. I'm just not sure I'm ready to jump on that wagon just yet. Though, if I do need some incentive, they ARE a studio based out of Belgium so that does entice me as somebody who likes playing games from every country... 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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