Cassylvania's Miserable Little Pile of Platinums

[Cassylvania]

On 1/23/2023 at 1:22 AM, Taruta13 said:

What the hell is the duck doing as a platinum icon for a game about wine-making?

 

The duck is also a card...that you can play at any time. I don't think it serves any purpose.

 

On 1/23/2023 at 1:22 AM, Taruta13 said:

As for me, not to toot my horn but I finally platinumed LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga... for the PS5. I platted the PS4 version a week ago and it two over two months from start to finish. I did the PS5 version a bit different, getting all of the free play exploriation as I could between chapters, which let me get the best upgrades for every role before six movies(I did them this time in the order of the movie releases, with the original trilogy first, than the prequel triad and finally the last three movies.) I think i was just playing those titles to delay the inevitable cleanup of all the RPGs I have to platinum this year, including a Kingdom Hearts title.

 

That's the only LEGO game I'm considering playing. Just waiting for the deep sale those games are known for.

 

In fact, that's a good segue into this next update.

 

Platinum #357 - Drawngeon: Dungeons of Ink and Paper

 

I really hate the title of this game...

 

Anyway, I don't know how many of you use PlatPrices, but it's been a godsend for keeping track of games I might want to play and sales that are going on. I simply add a game that looks interesting, bookmark my wishlist with the filter set to "Discount %", and check back every now and then to see what bargains I can find. If you do this long enough, you're going to see the same games popping up on sale all the time (mainly the LEGO games), but sometimes you'll see a deal you can't pass up. This game was going for $0.49. That's practically free.

 

Why was it on my wishlist in the first place? Well, topping my list of "Genres I miss the most" are grid-based dungeon crawlers. If you had told me when I was a kid that farming games and survival games would be more popular in 2023 than dungeon crawlers, I would've laughed at you...like all the kids who laughed at me for playing Harvest Moon. After all, Dungeon Master wasn't all that different than Doom or Diablo. It was just a bit slower and more strategic.

 

Of course, I love strategy games. This isn't strategic in the sense that there's turn-based combat or an extensive skill tree. It's a methodical, risk-versus-reward system. What characters do you take with you, where should you go, what items should you pick up, how deep into the dungeon should you venture? There's something very immersive about playing a dungeon crawler in first-person, seeing the monsters right in front of you and getting attacked from behind if you aren't paying attention. This is what I thought gaming in the 21st century would be like.

 

The best modern example I can think of is Legend of Grimrock, which desperately needs to be brought over to console. Heroes of the Monkey Tavern and The Bard's Tale IV were good, but they're the only other games like this that I know of on PS4. Darkest Dungeon is obviously an amazing game and draws inspiration from many of the classic dungeon crawlers, but there's something very different about seeing a game through the eyes of...well, the Beholder. That game was a classic.

 

But here I go waxing poetically about a game that cost less than a candy bar and could be played on a potato. Drawngeon is about as bare bones as it gets. They really leaned heavily into the "paper-and-pen" days by creating a game that is entirely hand-drawn. Tiles, monsters, NPCs, and objects are all flat, 2D images. Color is only used to show the rarity of an item or chest. Otherwise, it feels like you're navigating through somebody's sketchbook. This is a really neat concept that just feels half-finished, like most doodles.

 

I'm not going to pretend like there's a plot here. There doesn't need to be. You pick your gender and your class and you're thrust right into the game, with very little direction on where you go. You only have the UI to tell you what the buttons do. You can move forward, back, left, right, and rotate to either side. You have an attack and can pick up items. Depending on your class, you might have one extra ability. There's also a map that you can pull up and an inventory you can manage. You'll have to do that a lot because your starting bag isn't very big.

 

The map in the game is very small. There's a single village and a few dungeons scattered about the area. I couldn't tell if these dungeons were procedurally generated or not. Most of them only have a few floors, and I don't know if there's a set order to tackle them. You can actually access the final dungeon immediately after starting the game. To have any chance of survival, though, you'll need to level up and find better gear.

 

So, you explore the map and quickly see there are only a few types of enemies in this game. It has to be less than ten. They all behave in predictable ways, with most only seeming to attack if you stand next to them. Snakes were the only enemy that actively seemed to chase me. Some will throw slow-moving projectiles, but it's pretty easy to step out of the way. You just have to watch out for spiderwebs, which serve as a "wall" (unless you have the thorn armor, which allows you to break through them). If your dexterity is high enough, you can dodge attacks, but I found it easier just to exchange hits. Depends on the class you play as. The warrior is good at taking and dishing damage, the trickster is good at dodging, and the wizard can cast spells. I don't see what's stopping you from building up your defense and tanking everything, though. You can just eat items from your inventory to heal. No, not just mushrooms or bread. You can eat...literally anything...

 

Yeah, so one of the skills every class has is the ability to convert excess items into a heal. You can also sell them to a stone head in the village, which will give you gold. A stack of 99 gold essentially means you can restore 99 hit points, even at the base level of the skill. (I'm assuming higher levels heal you for more. I don't know because I didn't bother leveling it up past that. The skill is already hilariously OP.) Other items can heal you for more. I guess the only disadvantage is you can still get attacked while healing, so I guess you could accidentally die if you're caught fumbling around in your inventory. That will happen a lot because the controls in this game are a bit fiddly. Also, it's one of those die-once-and-it's-game-over games.

 

You can abuse the eating skill even more by getting the upgraded version, which allows your character to convert some "characteristics" of that item to their stats. So, eating a sword will increase your damage. Eating a mana crystal will increase your intelligence. (I'm pretty sure eating strange objects off the floor has the opposite effect on your mental capacity, but whatever.) The drawback is that most of these will also decrease one of your other stats. This can also be abused because...again, who cares about dodging attacks if enemies die in one hit and your defense is through the roof? I'm not sure if this an oversight or intentional.

 

We might have a first here. If you thought Hundred Days was short, this may be the first time it's taken me longer to write my review than beat the game. A typical playthrough is only about 1-2 hours long. This isn't a rogue-like, where you're expected to play through the game several times. Each class is different enough that I guess it's worth playing through three times...you kinda have to for the platinum...but I was hoping it'd be a bit more fleshed out. A full game like this would be great.

 

That said, we're talking about $0.49 here. If you get 10 hours out of this game (which I did because I died a few times), that's less than a nickle per hour. Let's compare that to XCOM 2. If you paid $60 for XCOM 2 on release day and got 300 hours out of it, like I did, that's $0.20/hour. Not bad, but Drawngeon is FOUR TIMES a better deal. Is it four times a better game? Hell no. But, cookies to bread crumbs, it has to be one of the best value games on the market. I also just made up that phrase.

 

Am I just trying to justify my purchase when I could've been playing Elden Ring? Probably.

[Taruta13]

3 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

That's the only LEGO game I'm considering playing. Just waiting for the deep sale those games are known for.

 

Fair enough, though I got the PS5 version for free after buying the PS4 version. If you only want to do one, do the PS5 version - the PS4 version has the PS3 inferiority complex and it lag multiple times and crashed three times for me. The PS5 did freeze-lag a few times near the end of my run but that was probably because my PS5 memory sucks d***** and I had too many games on the drive.

3 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

There's something very immersive about playing a dungeon crawler in first-person, seeing the monsters right in front of you and getting attacked from behind if you aren't paying attention.

 

That's basically my experience with my digital copy of Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, which I will probably never delete now that it'll be delisted once Nintendo shuts down the 3DS e-Shop in two months. R.I.P. (I tried to buy a physical copy of Persona Q, but Amazon trolled me and didn't deliver it, stealing my money. And yes, I know I could check my order but that was three months ago! I wanted to buy a Christmas gift for myself.) That game you reviewed looks like a quick and easy platinum and you can basically AFK once you get enough defense and health to basically be invincible if eating most stuff raises your stats. I bet there's a guide telling people what to eat to become invincible, since the graphics and music probably are so 5-year old childish that you can mute the game and just ignore it.

 

That joke aside, I'm glad you got a deal for it. When a game like that is cheaper than My Name Is Mayo, which is even easier to AFK, I think that shows that the devs did not really care if they sold a million copies, they just wanted to express themselves.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Taruta13

[Cassylvania]

Platinum #358 - Rise of the Slime

 

I told you guys the theme of this year would be lesser versions of better games. I bought this shortly after playing Slay the Spire a couple years ago, almost got around to playing it last year, and finally decided to take the plunge. I didn't know how difficult it was or how long it would take. It's one of those games that has 13 trophies and a platinum, so I figured it would be on the lighter side. What I didn't expect is that it's actually a competently-made game.

 

So, Rise of the Slime is a deck-building game that's a bit more approachable than the other games in that genre. You can kinda think of it as a watered-down version of Slay the Spire. You start out the game with a basic deck and can choose from one of three cards (or skip altogether) after each enemy you kill. Dungeons are more linear than Slay the Spire, but you'll occasionally come across rooms that have more than one exit or that offer you a choice between mutations (relics) or some other reward/curse. When you die, you have the option to abandon your run or continue from the last checkpoint. That makes it more forgiving than other games like this.

 

That's not to say this game is simply a clone. Movement and the placement of your character is actually important. While the cards you draw are randomized, you'll always begin your turn with a movement card that allows you to move 2 spaces, at the cost of 1 mana. You can use this offensively, such as to approach or an enemy (or get behind them for backstab damage), or defensively, such as to move away from an opponent or avoid a delayed attack. Terrain is also a factor, with acid and fire causing damage to any unit standing on them at the end of their turn. Enemies rotate between an "attack" phase and a "defend" phase, and they're pretty limited and predictable in what they'll do each turn. You can use this to your advantage. For example, you could focus on defense when you know the enemy is attacking that turn and offense when you know they won't. Enemies who are in the attack phase and can't reach you seem to delay their attack phase until the next turn, so running away can actually backfire when there are multiple enemies on the field because you could end up having all the enemies in the attack phase at the same time. Leaving them staggered out seems to be better.

 

During your first run, you'll only have the basic starter deck, but you'll eventually unlock the fire starter deck and acid starter deck. I tried all three, but quickly settled into the fire deck. My strategy was stacking fire damage on my opponents and stalling them with strong defensive cards. There are some good synergies you can make, and it's fun to experiment with the different mutations and familiars. I went with the familiar that adds 3 defense at the end of your turn.

 

I probably beat the game in under 10 runs, but a full run could take a couple hours. You keep your gold when you die, but you have to use it at the shop starting area or it's gone forever, so it only really benefits you on your next run. I'll also say that save scumming is totally possible in this game. If you enter a room and don't like the mutation that's there, for example, you can just exit to the main menu and try again. Game only seems to autosave at the start of each room.

 

Surprisingly, I liked this game. There's very little to complain about. I don't want to make it sound like it's easy because I got wrecked my first few runs. I'd probably still be trying to beat the first area if I hadn't stumbled into my broken deck. It's certainly not on the level of Slay the Spire, but only in the sense that it's more forgiving and less intense (and doesn't have that killer soundtrack). As someone with limited experience in this genre, I think it's a good introduction to deck-builders, but veterans might be bored by its simplicity.

 

I'd say this is maybe a 10-12 hour platinum and a 3/10 in difficulty, which is a sweet spot for me. Don't pay $15 for it, but maybe keep it in the back of your mind for a sale. I wish more "hardcore" genres had welcoming entries like this. Maybe then I could get my friends to play a Souls game...

[Cassylvania]

Just when you thought it was safe go back in...

 

Platinum #359 - Subnautica: Below Zero

 

I'm glad my degree in marine biology is paying off.

 

Subnautica: Below Zero is the sequel to one of my favorite survival games, so it was only a matter of time before I got around it. I was a little hesitant going in because I knew the game took place in a polar region, which is less interesting to me than the warm water setting of the original, and also it looked like much of the game took place on land, which didn't seem to be in the spirit of the source material. Well, I'm happy to report that you're underwater for a good chunk of the game and the cold doesn't bother me anyway.

 

The storyline has you playing as a different character than the original, but the basic gameplay is the same. You begin with very little resources and have to scavenge the seafloor looking for material to build a base, locate artifacts, and stay alive. There are several difficulties you can play on, but I opted for the easiest, which turned this survival game into more of an exploration game. I didn't mind because I find food and water mechanics to be a bit overrated. For some reason, almost every survival game I've ever played requires you to consume about twenty adult cows per day in order to keep from starving to death. It does render a few items and gameplay mechanics obsolete, though.

 

The map was smaller than I expected. For the most part, the game does a good job of making it easy to navigate. The controls are good, the Seatruck handles well, and I was impressed how intuitive it was to follow cave systems or waypoints (beacons). Normally, with a game that has waypoints but a corridor-like system, it's very easy to get lost or keep running into a wall. I only had that problem a couple times on land. Underwater, most of the cave systems seem to loop back on each other, so I was usually able to get where I wanted to go, even if I was taking a bit of a detour or finding a different way back to the surface. I'm always interested in how developers try to "guide" players in open world games like this.

 

That said, the reliance of cave systems in this game made it far less scary than the original. I'm not sure why. Dark, narrow corridors should be terrifying. I think it's because there's a lot less sealife in this game. There are a few creatures that will attack you on your ship, but none of them seem overly threatening. The only hostile thing that got my heart pounding was a sea monkey. I was only an hour into the game and I had built my first scanner. I started using it on some plants and this bastard sea monkey came out of nowhere and stole it from me. I chased him down with my survival knife and cut him up into little pieces. I felt pretty good about myself afterward.

 

Spoiler

Later in the game, the sea monkeys deliver you items instead of taking them from you. I felt bad after this.

 

There are also pengwings (not a typo), which are adorable. Also, hostile if you try to run off with one of their babies.

 

But even the leviathans in this game weren't scary. The only moment I felt any sense of dread was when I entered the deep sea, which I assume is the world's edge. THAT is much scarier than any cave system. I still don't know what happens in the original if you venture too far off the map. I don't want to know. But that game did horror right. This one felt like it was trying to be more approachable, which is the opposite direction I would expect from a sequel. Which leads me to ask the question: is there even enough here to warrant being a sequel? You've heard the phrase, "This meeting could've been an email"? Well, this game could've been a DLC. That's what it plays like. You have a smaller map, a shorter story, and some nifty new gadgets to play around with. (The Snowfox is cool, though. I also liked the Jukebox. My boy Miracle of Sound got his song in the game.) If Subnautica is a $30 game, this should be around $15. Worth a play if you liked the first one.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the last sea-based survival game on the console. I guess Green Hell is next.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Cassylvania

[Puppeter04]

I was having so much fun reading this, so immersive, then I realized I was reading posts from 2017 but here I am, 2023. 

 

Congrats on the 359, that's a pretty number! 

 

You are the first person I know that actually have a degree in marine biology, everyone wanted to study that (myself included) when we were younger, I'm glad to see that you made it !!! and great review as Ive been seen here, that's usual ? Your miserable little pile of plats is not that miserable nor little, keep it up, looking forward for the next update!! 

[Cassylvania]

1 hour ago, Puppeter04 said:

I was having so much fun reading this, so immersive, then I realized I was reading posts from 2017 but here I am, 2023.

 

Dang. Have I really been doing this for six years? I remember only starting this thread because I was sick one day.

 

1 hour ago, Puppeter04 said:

You are the first person I know that actually have a degree in marine biology, everyone wanted to study that (myself included) when we were younger, I'm glad to see that you made it !!! and great review as Ive been seen here, that's usual  Your miserable little pile of plats is not that miserable nor little, keep it up, looking forward for the next update!! 

 

Thanks. That's kinda the joke I always make... that everybody wanted to be a marine biologist when they were a kid. I actually wanted to be a cartoonist. It wasn't until later in my life that I took up an interest in science. I just like to reference it whenever I play a game that has to do with the ocean, which is a surprising number of games.

 

If you do go back and read some of the earlier posts or reviews, hopefully you'll find them entertaining. I try to mix things up from time to time, so it's not always just a straight-up review. I think my favorite games to review are actually the ones that piss me off, so I think I've become a bit of a masochist.

 

I don't know what game is next. I can't finish Tropico 6 until I find someone to help me with the MP trophy. (I am going to absolutely eviscerate that game in my review, though.) I have some other active games, but they're going to take a while to finish. We have the 15k milestone coming up, so I guess we could start preparing for that. I don't have any plans for that one, but I told you two years ago that it would happen in 2023. I can't wait to get the next one in 2025.

[Puppeter04]

9 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

 

Thanks. That's kinda the joke I always make... that everybody wanted to be a marine biologist when they were a kid. I actually wanted to be a cartoonist. It wasn't until later in my life that I took up an interest in science. I just like to reference it whenever I play a game that has to do with the ocean, which is a surprising number of games.

 

 

And it's true, everybody wanted to be one when we were kids but then, in my case, I turned into the weird kid that wanted to be a coroner. Then changed again, and I have my degree in nutrition, and currently doing a Ph.D. which I have to defend in June. But what I find kind of sad is that a lot of us really have an interest in something artistic but grew up with the saying "art won't pay your bills". 

 

Yeah, I've been reading a lot of them and had a blast ngl. Love when people are pissed off, most hilarious reviews ever. I kinda do the same thing, I like to complain so check out mine if you feel like it. Narrating my return after 2 years. 

 

Then I'm looking forward to a Tropico6 review, I'd help you if I had it tho. Anyways, if you ever need help with something lmk, don't trust the games on my profile cause I'm a collector and I have a bunch of them not started yet it this account, just ask away, and if I don't have it, I'll just buy it if its interesting enough

[Taruta13]

I might start looking into games that were run on GDQ - Gris, The Last Campfire, Tunic, stuff like that. I really love Games Done Quick, I listened to one of their shows where the hosts were giving trivia questions to the runners, it was fun.

[Cassylvania]

14 hours ago, Puppeter04 said:

And it's true, everybody wanted to be one when we were kids but then, in my case, I turned into the weird kid that wanted to be a coroner. Then changed again, and I have my degree in nutrition, and currently doing a Ph.D. which I have to defend in June. But what I find kind of sad is that a lot of us really have an interest in something artistic but grew up with the saying "art won't pay your bills".

 

Very cool. Good luck with your defense! I still have nightmares about mine. (The work leading up to it. The actual defense was a huge relief off my shoulders.)

 

3 hours ago, Taruta13 said:

I might start looking into games that were run on GDQ - Gris, The Last Campfire, Tunic, stuff like that. I really love Games Done Quick, I listened to one of their shows where the hosts were giving trivia questions to the runners, it was fun.

 

All good games. The first two anyway. I haven't gotten to Tunic yet, but it's on my wishlist.

 

Not a Platinum #36 (maybe?)

 

Normally, I only do NAP reviews if it's a longer game that probably should've had a platinum, like Resident Evil 4 or King's Quest. I thought this was going to be a long game, but this is one of those ultra rare times that I think the PSNP guide grossly overestimated the amount of time it would take. It's listed at 25 hours. I started the game at 1 AM last night. I played for a few hours, slept 'til 11, got up, painted a ceiling, had a late lunch, watched two football games, and now I'm just letting enemies kill me for the "Die 50 times" trophy - the last one I need for the 100%. I think I only died four times during normal gameplay, so this could take a while.

 

Really cool game, though. It's a rogue-lite where the gimmick is that the difficulty increases the longer you stay alive. You could rush through every level, but then you might not have enough upgrades to survive later on. You can take your time and search every level for upgrades, but then...well, I mean, the game is supposed to get harder, but I found you can absolutely break it with enough power-ups. Even on the default difficulty, I got to the point where I was healing so much faster than I was taking damage that I could just stand in one spot, hold the R2 button down, and kill everything. I actually thought the game might crash because of all the crap flying across the screen. If you like having a power trip, this is your kind of game.

 

There are a bunch of characters you can play as, but I only ever got to try the Commando (only character unlocked at the start of the game, Bandit (the one I used almost exclusively, but had to be unlocked by beating the third level), and HAN-D (good for drowning snails -- sick idea for a trophy, devs). From what I can tell, though, each character has four skills, which are mapped to the trigger buttons. For the characters I used, one seems to be a default attack that is always available, another is a movement skill (e.g. dodge or temporarily increases running speed), and the other two are special attacks with a short cooldown. Enemies can spawn anywhere on the map, but you're usually faster than them and a lot of them don't have long range attacks. They also generally can't climb ladders. I found positioning yourself on small platforms or on high ground to be key for survival. Some enemies can absolutely obliterate your HP if you're in melee range.

 

I only played this game because I'm interested in the sequel, but I have no complaints. I like the death messages, which I'm seeing repeatedly right now. It doesn't just say, "You have died." It insults and belittles you. I always wish more games did that. Remember that in the Arkham series? The villains would gloat over your presumed corpse, having finally taken down the Batman. Nothing makes me want to get back into a fight more than a game that tries to rub it in.

 

OK. There's the last trophy. Until next time!

[Cassylvania]

Platinum #360 - Bugsnax

 

Curiosity got the better of me. I wasn't going to play this game, but since it was free on PS+ or whatever, I figured I'd give it a shot.

 

Bugsnax is probably the most horrifying game ever conceived. I legitimately wasn't sure if this was a kid's game or a horror game masquerading as a kid's game. I'm still not sure. To explain why, though, I need to first explain what "Bugsnax" are and what "Grumps" are. You probably already know what Bugsnax are if you've seen the previews for this game. They're sentient beings that look, taste, and get treated as food. Think of a burger with eyes and the ability to say its name. (Yes, like a Pokemon.) Even as a kid, I thought it was weird when food manufacturers would use a depiction of the actual food as their mascot. Goldfish, for example. "The snack that smiles back" is literal fridge horror. I didn't even want to eat animal crackers because they looked too close to the real thing. So, for there to be a world in which some creatures are made for the sole purpose of being consumed...I mean, that's pretty messed up.

 

But that wasn't apparently enough for these developers. The "people" in this world are creatures called Grumps. They're basically Muppets or furries. When they eat Bugsnax, their body parts...turn into that corresponding food. So, a Grump who eats a Bugsnak (I assume that's the singular term) that resembles a doughnut might grow a doughnut for an ear. I don't know if that's funny or terrifying. If they eat enough Bugsnax, their entire body transforms. I'm still not convinced this isn't a horror game.

 

So, in this game, you play a journalist who is invited to Snaktooth Island by Elizabert Megafig (basically Steve Irwin, if he was a woman and also a walrus) to report on the existence of Bugsnax. A flying pizza fucks up your airship and you crash land in the forest, where you meet Filbo, the mayor of Snakburg. Filbo informs you that Lizbert has gone missing and also basically everybody left Snakburg because he's a terrible leader. Your goal is to bring everybody back to Snakburg and find out what happened to Lizbert. Also, you need to capture a lot of Bugsnax and feed them to your fellow Grumps because they're the only food source on the island.

 

Let's get the positives out of the way. The voice acting in this game is fantastic. I'll even go so far as to say the characters are good. There are over a dozen Grumps in the game and they each have their own personality and storyline. For example, Wambus is a farmer. He talks and acts like you would expect a farmer to. His wife, Triffany, is an archeologist with a thick Minnesotan accent, dontchaknow. There's a diva, a scientist, an herbalist, a Chad, a conspiracy theorist... My favorite is the one that's just Danny DeVito. What I like the most is that they're not just static characters. They have real problems that you help them to solve, and a good chunk of the side quests in the game are devoted to getting to know more about them. It's rare for a game to have fleshed-out characters like this all the way across the board and I appreciate that.

 

There is no combat in this game or even a health meter. There's a day/night cycle and sometimes it rains (I like the effect of droplets running down the screen), but that only affects what Bugsnax appear in each biome. Most of the gameplay centers around catching Bugsnax. How do you catch them? Well, that depends. Every Bugsnax is unique and you end up with several tools at your disposal, such as a trap, trip wire, launchpad, and sauce slinger. Scanning a Bugsnak allows you to see their likes and dislikes. For example, if a Bugsnak likes ranch dressing, you might be able to put down a trap, cover it in ranch dressing, and then stand back and wait. Easy, right? But what if it's flying? Well, maybe you put down the launchpad, put the trap ON the launchpad, and then catch the Bugsnak while the trap is in the air. It gets more complicated when you see how Bugsnax interact with each other. You might need one Bugsnak to help you catch another. For example, you can't catch a Bugsnak if it's on fire, so you might need a cold Bugsnak to cool it off. I'd say there's some light puzzle-solving, but there's usually more than one solution and it never gets to the point where I think you'd need a guide.

 

This is the part where I was going to say negative things about the game. It's occurred to me that I don't have any. This is a well-made game and I'm a little shocked. The graphics are colorful and easy on the eyes, the music is chill, the Grumps look hilarious when they're fully transformed into Bugsnax, some of the monster designs are really good, and the controls are only slightly jank. Sometimes it can be tricky to get traps set up the way you want. At other times, you can catch a handful of Bugsnax in rapid succession. There were times when I was so good that I didn't even know how I knocked a Bugsnax out for an easy capture.

 

As far as the horror element goes... Is the game actually a horror game? That was the question I had going in. It definitely borders on being unsettling at times -- just look at the way the Grumps watch you, even while they're sleeping -- but it never goes all the way. It's like that episode of Spongebob where he and Squidward have to work at the Krusty Krab...at night *finger point*. Yes, that episode probably led to a lot of angry calls at Nickelodeon HQ from parents, but it never forgot it was a kid's show. And any time I can reference one of the early seasons of Spongebob, that's a good thing. Not even kid's show or kid's game needs to be 100% pure. They can have dark twists or unnatural elements. Look at me. I grew up thinking that every sewer grate was a gateway to giant, crime-fighting turtles. Some episodes of Scooby-Doo gave me chills, no matter how many times the monster turned out to be a person in a mask. The entire plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit was fucked up. I'm sure there are some deeply-buried emotional scars that I'll never recover from, but I like to think I turned out fine.

 

In a stunning upset, I AM going to recommend this game. It's too bizarre not to. I am all for more games being creative and fun, even if it seems their entire marketing campaign was based on shock and memes. If you can get the game for free (the DLC is free too), why wouldn't you play this? Don't be a Grump. Be a Bugsnax!

[Copanele]

32 minutes ago, Cassylvania said:

Platinum #360 - Bugsnax

 

 

33 minutes ago, Cassylvania said:

 

In a stunning upset, I AM going to recommend this game. It's too bizarre not to. 

Yes...I think...I will try this game too ?it sounds SO WEIRD, like a pokemon creepypasta that somehow works! That was one funny review!

Glad this fever dream of a game turns out to be actually good

[Aceterix]

I very much enjoyed risk of rain, and having not too long ago finished risk of rain 2 I look forward to hearing your thoughts as there's nowhere near enough coverage of the game for my liking!

 

If you can, play it with people for some of the time as it's a slightly different experience (and no less enjoyable!).

[Taruta13]

I've seen a lot of people praise Bugsnax, though I might take a long time to actually get around to it - I just preordered the Deluxe Edition of Hogwarts Legacy and I have so many LEGO games to burn through.

[Cassylvania]

Platinum #361 - Green Hell

 

After losing to the Detroit Lions in a game that would have sent his team into the playoffs, Aaron Rodgers took his ball and his ayahuasca and retreated into darkness. This game is his fever dream. Will Aaron Rodgers prove to the Lions that he is the true king of the jungle, or is Green Bay destined to become GREEN HELL?

 

It's (obviously) the latter. Things start out simple enough. Aaron Rodgers arrives in the Amazon rainforest with his wife, who is there to make contact with the indigenous people known as the Yabahuaca. You have the option of playing through the tutorial if you want. I recommend it because it's hilarious. You pick up a rock and make an axe. You get a trophy. You pick up some sticks and make a fire. You get a trophy. You walk to the stream and get a drink. You get a trophy. You finish the tutorial, you're feeling pretty good about yourself, and then you get a trophy called You are not prepared. How right they are. I give you about twenty minutes before you get the trophy for dying for the first time. This game is fuckin' brutal. Even on the one of the easiest difficulties, I got mauled by a jaguar almost right away. If it's not the jaguars, it's the snakes or the spiders. Don't forget about the stingrays. You think that random flower you found on the ground is safe for eating? Why don't you find out? Oh, look. Here comes a friendly native to STICK YOUR HEAD ON A PIKE. Don't run into a beehive or anthill as you try to escape. Watch your step. It's a long way down.

 

This is how games should be. I don't need a tutorial to tell me that a large cat lunging at my throat is a problem. And if you like your hand-holding to be non-existent, this is probably the game for you. Let's discuss a little about the gameplay.

 

If it's not obvious by now, this is a first-person survival game set in Amazonia. There is a plot (which isn't all too different from what I described), but I wouldn't go so far as to call it interesting or unique. I actually guessed the "twist" before the tutorial was over and you probably will too. But the basic idea is that Aaron Rodgers has amnesia and it's up to you to guide him through the jungle and find four ayahuasca ritual bowls so that he can recover his memories and save his wife Mia. This could take two hours if you know what you're doing or 100+ hours if you wander in the wrong direction or really like base-building. I'm honestly not sure if I agree with the ~30 hour time to platinum on this one.

 

Anyway, you're expected to die in this game. They say Dark Souls is "hard but fair." There's not much "fair" in the jungle. If you want to know if something is safe to eat, you have to eat it. Years of survival training went out the window after I realized that you should eat every mushroom you come across. (Well, MOST of them anyway...) I actually like this. Once you know what a food does to you, Aaron Rodgers will "remember," so you can see the stats on the screen the next time you come across it. Of course, if YOU remember, you could always just avoid (or eat) that food on your next playthrough or an earlier save. Surprisingly, most things are safe and the consequences for eating "bad" things usually aren't enough to kill you, unless you're already in a bad position.

 

While we're on the subject of food, this is probably the most realistic survival game I've seen when it comes to eating. I will almost always abuse this mechanic in other games by hoarding whatever food is easiest to come across. Here, it would probably be crab meat. They're abundant, fairly easy to catch with a spear, and don't try to gouge out your eyes when you chase them. The problem, like my grandpa always used to say, is that man cannot live on crab meat alone. There are THREE hunger meters you have to keep an eye on: protein, fats, and carbs, which are conveniently tracked on your watch. If any of these get low, Aaron Rodgers won't be able to perform as well. I don't think you can die from not eating (OK, I guess it isn't that realistic), but it definitively hurts your stamina meter, which you'll need for performing even basic tasks, like chopping wood and starting a fire.

 

I realize that could sound daunting -- after all, maintaining one hunger meter is already my biggest source of frustration in survival games -- but the jungle giveth. If you walk around, food will literally rain down from the trees. You can get fats from nuts and carbs from mushrooms and bananas. Protein is the one I struggled with the most, but only because Aaron Rodgers is picky and doesn't like to eat raw meat. He also doesn't seem to like snails either, even though they have no negative side effects...

 

Water is also important. Much like Subnautica, water is everywhere but most of it isn't safe to drink. You have a few options. You can boil water, but you need to make a fire and have a container to keep water in. Rain also puts fires out and it rains a LOT in the rainforest (hence the name). The better way is to capture rainwater, which you can do by leaving a coconut shell or tortoise shell (my favorite item in the game) on the ground. You can also build a water collector, but I prefer the shells because they're mobile. Drop a few on the ground while you're gathering supplies or napping and come back later to have a drink. Coconuts and some fruits have water in them too.

 

Another realistic thing this game does is injuries. You have to visually inspect your body to treat wounds, rashes, and other ailments. You'll also get leeches on you, which you must manually remove by rotating your limbs and plucking them off. It's as disgusting as it sounds. In fact, all of the ailments are gross to look at. I'm surprised there's no option to turn them off. You could say, "Well, that's your incentive to not get hurt," which is fine, but you get leeches just from walking around. Do they hurt you? I don't think so, but it does lower your sanity meter. If Aaron Rodgers' sanity gets too low, he'll start talking to himself and get attacked by hallucinations. Cool concept, but rarely happened to me during the game, so I can't speak much on it.

 

What can hurt you? Pretty much anything. Jaguars will actively hunt you down. I never learned a good way to kill one. (Well, a headshot with a spear or arrow will kill anything in one hit, but they sneak up on you.) Natives are a problem because they're usually in a pack, but you can hear them singing from a mile away and they have a very short attention span. I guess they'll occasionally bother you if you leave a fire burning at night, but it's more of a nuisance than an actual threat. It's the snakes that will get you. These fuckers are everywhere and I swear the developers designed them to spawn directly in whatever path you're walking. You will absolutely come to hate the sound of their rattling -- because you won't hear it until you're almost on top of them. Once they bite you, it's basically game over. You have to deal with a venom wound and a fever. If you don't already have the ingredients for treating these things, you're probably going to pass out before you can find them, which means you're going to wake up with a worm, which is easily the most disgusting thing in the game to look at. Spiders (which roam near banana trees), scorpions (which live in caves), centipedes (which I ALWAYS forget about -- they sometimes appear on long sticks or logs you pick up) can also bite.

 

Those are your main threats, I'd say. You don't have to worry about the temperature, which is surprising to me, because I would think heat would be a pretty big hazard in the Amazon. But once you know what is safe and what is dangerous, and what items you should carry with you at all times, it's up to you if you even want to bother with base-building in this game. I don't really think it's important. For the Story Mode, you're almost always on the move, and progressing the story means unlocking new areas...so it's unlikely you'll be going back to places you've already been. Besides, the jungle already has everything you need to stay alive. You just have to figure out how to use it.

 

Now, to get the platinum, you're probably going to play through the Story Mode twice: once on an easier difficulty (don't pick the easiest because it turns off most of the threats) and then again on Green Hell difficulty, which is permadeath. (You can save scum with the USB trick or by just saving to two different slots.) You'll also need to complete the seven Challenges, which are honestly kinda fun. (No save scumming allowed.) The rest of the trophies can be obtained in Survival Mode, which lets you turn yourself invincible if you want. It would kinda suck to get some of the trophies without this.

 

I want to talk about the Challenges because these will probably be the platinum-breaker for most people. (Permadeath isn't that bad, even without save scumming. If you can do the Challenges, you'll be fine with anything Story Mode throws at you.) Every Challenge is timed. You have three days (one of them gives you five) to complete the objective. You cannot save. That heightens the tension and makes that rattling all the more terrifying because one snake bite WILL likely end your run. What's interesting, though, is that each Challenge teaches you how to master one aspect of the game. For example, the first Challenge I did involved having to build a huge bonfire. All you have to do is chop down trees and carry the logs to the top of a hill. But the further out you have to go for each tree, the scarier it gets. Three days is plenty of time, so I had a little base camp I'd go to at night and try to keep up my energy and tools. Another Challenge tasked me with building a raft. This needed a ridiculous amount of wood and coconuts. I had to throw rocks at trees to get coconuts down, which I had never done in the rest of the game. There was even one Challenge that required me to hunt down thirteen specific animals. I don't think I killed more than three animals during my entire Story Mode run. I couldn't make a headshot to save my life. After failing a few times, I had this great run going, where I was no-scoping capybaras and armadillos. I only needed a green iguana and I had no clue where to find one. All of the sudden, he came bursting out of the brush, looked at me, and then darted off. I was flinging arrows wildly in every direction. I thought I lost him. Most animals will eventually bleed you if you hit them, but I don't even think I came close. I got to the top of a hill, looked around, and I saw his beady little eyes coming right at me. I landed my spear right between them. It was great. The Blacksmith Challenge was bullshit, but the rest were fun.

 

You'll notice sometimes I play a game sporadically over the course of several weeks or months and other times I'll stick to one game until I platinum it. That was the case here. A lot of times, I like to do that with games I think will be a challenge because I like to see the evolution of my gameplay. I was not good at this game in the beginning. I didn't even want to leave the starting area. The game doesn't tell you how to make a lot of things, so I was just trying to build a little campsite and gather some food. I didn't last long. By the end of the game, I knew exactly what I needed to do, and I was able to speedrun through permadeath.

 

If it seems like I'm talking the game up a lot, I am, but I'm about to hit it with a bombshell. There is one fundamental problem with this game and it honestly almost makes this unplayable. It's the controls. You'll notice when you first start playing and I'm not sure it ever gets better. Crafting is probably the worst. When you open your inventory, you have to move a cursor to select an object, as if you were playing a game on PC. This is made even worse by the fact that the items in your inventory aren't neatly sorted like in most games. I actually like that Aaron Rodgers just shoves the items wherever they'll fit, but it means sometimes the item you want is slightly hidden behind a larger item. When you're crafting, that window appears on the other side of the screen, so you're trying to drag stuff around and it becomes a mess. Let me just walk you through the button prompts you need to make an arrow. Touchpad to open your radial menu, right joystick to the left to select inventory, scroll right twice to find the pouch where the feathers are kept, move the cursor down to the feather, press triangle to open the menu, select craft, press X to select another feather, scroll left to the pouch where the sticks are kept, move the cursor to the small sticks, press X, and then press R1 to craft (or tap R3 first if you want to create multiple arrows). These aren't hard commands, but they're long and awkward. If you press the wrong button during that sequence, you could end up moving an item instead of adding it to your crafting window or closing out your inventory. I never got the point where I felt comfortable with the controls in this game. Even chopping wood is sometimes a pain because Aaron Rodgers will swing the weapon the wrong way when the stick is on the ground or miss the wood completely.

 

I take that back. The WORST thing about the controls is the body inspection. I can't explain how awkward it is to open the radial menu, select inspection, and then manually select AND rotate each limb. Because it's not even to just look at a limb. You have to turn it over so you can find the wound or pluck off every last leech. There were times I could do it very quickly, as if it was second nature to me, and then there were times I was fumbling around and kept hitting the wrong button. I don't know. It's probably OK if you play it on a computer, but it's not optimized at all for console, and it makes me hesitant to recommend this game.

 

That said, clearly this is a good survival game. I had fun with it, I felt like I got better as I went, and I didn't hate the game by the time the platinum rolled around. That's unusual for me. Now, how does it rank amongst other survival games? Well, I said before that The Long Dark is my gold standard, Subnautica is my silver standard, and The Forest is my bronze standard. This game is very similar to The Forest. It has a similar setting, similar enemies, and similar gameplay mechanics. I think this game does a few things better, but I also think it's worse in some areas. Atmospherically, for example, I felt like I was in The Forest. I never felt like I was in the jungle here. Yes, it had the right colors and sounds, but I felt like I was in a studio for a jungle movie rather than an actual jungle, if that makes sense. I remember playing The Forest and getting actual chills when it started raining or the sun went down. In this game, I couldn't even tell it was raining most of the time. Maybe it's just me, but I just felt I wasn't part of this world, and immersion is probably the most important aspect of a survival game. (The music on the main menu screen is awesome, though. Been listening to that as I write this.)

 

I came into this review knowing I was going to rank this slightly above or slightly below The Forest. It has to be below. Not terrible, mind you. A game that is slightly below The Forest is still leagues better than some of the games I play, and that's more of a nod to how good The Forest was than a slight to any other game. I don't know what medal we can give Aaron Rodgers for fourth place. Maybe like...copper or pewter?

 

EDIT: Wait, no. I must have second-hand ayahuasca because I got my medals all mixed up. The Forest is my silver standard and Stranded Deep is my bronze. That makes more sense. Not sure why I left Subnautica out of there, but maybe because that was a more chill experience. (I'd still put it above The Forest and below The Long Dark.) Let's keep the rankings the way they are and say Green Hell is somewhere between the silver and bronze tier. Not quite as good as The Forest, but not nearly as janky as Stranded Deep. I don't think the separation is big enough to justify creating a separate tier for Green Hell.

 

For the record, that's:

1. The Long Dark
2. Subnautica... and the sequel, I guess
3. The Forest
4. Green Hell
5. Stranded Deep

Is that...it for survival games? Besides the ones I've already mentioned, I've done Minecraft, Terraria, No Man's Sky, Days Gone (if that counts), The Survivalists, The Flame in the Flood, and This War of Mine. Only Minecraft and No Man's Sky are first-person games, but I'm not ranking them because Minecraft is more about creativity than survival and NMS has changed a lot since launch day, which is when I played it, so I can't say much on the subject. (Far Cry Primal was pretty cool, though. I always forget about that game. Maybe because I have zero interest in the rest of the series.) I know there's Ark, Rust, and Conan Exiles, but all those games look...uh, yeah. I don't know if I'll do Don't Starve on this account. I played that to death on PC. Stranded Sails looks glitchy and not very fun. Smalland could be good, since we're certainly never going to get Grounded on PlayStation... I'd like to play Raft, but I don't know if we'll see that either.

 

Oh, geez. I forgot about Windbound. Strap on your sails, boys. Looks like we'll be heading out to sea again. (Damn, look at the rarity of those trophies...)

Edited February 12, 2023 by Cassylvania

[Taruta13]

Glad to see you are doing well. I don't think I could survive a survival game. (rimshot) I already had my fill of horror with LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2. Yes, I am going to rant and flame that game until the day I die because it is a janky pile of hot garbage in performance standards. It crashed four times on me. ? The only reason I don't hate it is because it builds off of the LEGO Marvel-verse and did a really good job covering a lot of obscure characters.

 

Now I just need one more game to get to my 100th platinum.

[Cassylvania]

Man, I don't know, guys. I've been watching YouTube videos on survival games and I might have to swap my placement of Subnautica and The Forest. I forgot how awesome The Forest was. The Long Dark is still the most immersive, but The Forest was the scariest and had the best base-building. Green Hell doesn't really compare because the most you'll get is a little jump scare when a rattlesnake or jaguar appears.

 

I've compiled a list of at least a dozen more survival games, so we're not going to run out any time soon.

 

In the meantime, I'm trying to work in some Metroidvanias this year. Such as this one.

 

Platinum #362 - Carrion

 

So, here's a question. Can a horror game be considered a horror game if you're the scariest thing in it? I got a better question. Can a Metroidvania be considered a Metroidvania if there's no platforming?

 

In Carrion, you play as...fuck if I know. Some sort of gelatinous biomass with multiple heads and extremely long tendrils. I'm going to call it a spaghetti monster because dissociation is my only coping mechanism in life. You start out as a little meatball with noodle arms and evolve over time to become one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. How do you do that? Well, you go around and eat humans. You're trapped in some sort of military laboratory, so there are plenty of them around. Eating them restores your health, but there are also containment units that provide you upgrades, which allow you to access previously unreachable areas. That's pretty much the only reason this game could be considered a Metroidvania. It's actually pretty linear, all things considered.

 

The reason I say there's no platforming is because of how the spaghetti monster moves. It's almost like playing an underwater game. Your tendrils "adhere" to the walls automatically, so moving is as simple as pushing the joystick in that direction. It doesn't matter how big the room is. The spaghetti monster can climb vertically just as fast as it can slither across the ground, which is at least double the speed of most video game protagonists and certainly faster than anything in this game. It's horrifying to watch.

 

As far as the gameplay goes, you're mostly just trying to progress through the laboratory and "spread your biomass" everywhere. These biomass spots essentially serve as your save points, since dying just allows you to create another form of yourself. You can also return to them if you're hurt and it will refill some of your health, which is important because your size is proportional to your health bar. If you take a lot of damage, you'll be reverted back into a little meatball, which limits your abilities. On the other hand, sometimes you WANT to be small because those weaker abilities are necessary to progress through certain areas. To assist, there are pools of...gooey stuff, where you can "drop" your biomass. (I don't know how to type these sentences without sounding crude. I'm sorry.) This is essentially like leaving a portion of yourself behind, which you can claim later if you need a quick refill or just leave there because health is pretty easy to come across.

 

How dangerous are the enemies in this game? Uh, well. Ellen Ripley, they are not. In all honesty, though, what are they supposed to do? You can scale any wall, crawl through vents, rip a human apart in a matter of seconds, and regenerate your body. The most they can do is put up walls and shoot bullets at you. They have stronger defenses as you progress through the game, sure, but this was intended to be a power trip. I'm glad too because it's about time I stop feeling like the weakest character on the screen at any time.

Is there a plot? I mean, I guess. You get "flashbacks" that have you playing as the humans for a brief period of time. There's no dialogue, but you're smart enough to figure out what's going on.

 

It's a short game and the trophy list is easy. Only need to beat the game and grab a few (unmissable) collectibles along the way. Navigating the lab is a bit confusing because of all the winding corridors and portals, but (a) you can clear them very quickly due to how fast the spaghetti monster moves, and (b) exit signs and collectible signs are clearly lit up in the background and point you in the right direction. The collectibles give you additional powers (more energy, better resistance to fire, etc.), so they're probably worth grabbing, but you'll need certain upgrades to get most of them.

 

That just leaves the question of whether it's worth playing or not. I think it really depends on the price tag. The concept of playing as a monster is neat, but there isn't a whole lot here to digest (ironically enough). There's very little story or exploration, no platforming or reaction mechanics, the combat sections boil down to either consuming everything in sight or simply waiting for the enemy to turn their back on you, and the puzzles are usually as simple as flipping a switch or figuring out what size meatball you want to be. What you have here is a quick, atmospheric, physics-based romp, which isn't a bad thing. It's filling for a few hours but bland, like pasta without sauce.

 

If you can get it for under $5 or if it ever becomes free, yeah, give it a shot, but there are other games that let you play as a monster that do is better. Might I suggest Dark Souls?

 

Carry on, my wayward son.

 

19 hours ago, Taruta13 said:

Glad to see you are doing well. I don't think I could survive a survival game. (rimshot) I already had my fill of horror with LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2. Yes, I am going to rant and flame that game until the day I die because it is a janky pile of hot garbage in performance standards. It crashed four times on me. The only reason I don't hate it is because it builds off of the LEGO Marvel-verse and did a really good job covering a lot of obscure characters.

 

Now I just need one more game to get to my 100th platinum.

 

What do you have in mind for #100? I got my 15k milestone on some random trophy in Green Hell. I was too lazy to find something more creative. But given the dog-eat-dog world of the last three games I've played, I guess it works.

[Taruta13]

1 hour ago, Cassylvania said:

What do you have in mind for #100? I got my 15k milestone on some random trophy in Green Hell. I was too lazy to find something more creative. But given the dog-eat-dog world of the last three games I've played, I guess it works.

 

Well it's either going to be the PS5 version of Shantae and the Seven Sirens, which I didn't realize had stacks, or SaGa Frontier Remastered. I was a little worried about getting into that game, but now that I have two DevilSquids and everyone has over 850 health, I'm not too concerned. I just cheese Gaze of Death to insta-kill the DevilSquids in Yorkland swamp. Oh yeah, starting on Lute since he has no story beats between the first scene and the final boss. Just need to talk to a guy in Owmi to start the final dungeon.

 

SaGa Frontier was my #100 in my last account, but it'll probably be the same here unless I get hooked on finishing the second Shantae or I get tired and sleep through February and have to do World of Final Fantasy for my Spring Backlog.

 

Love the review. I'm not really into body horror games, but if the platinum for Carrion is that easy and there's no real threat of game over, might look into it for a future platinum, break out of my usual box.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Taruta13

[Cassylvania]

Platinum #363 - Tropico 6

 

Well... Some games luck out. I was going to tear this game a new one, but it took so long to find somebody to get the last trophy I needed (thanks @SternPhoenix) that I've forgiven the game for what it put me through. I also forgot about 90% of the game, so I'm not even sure how I'm going to review it.

 

How the hell does @DrBloodmoney do this...?

 

Uh... I guess we'll take a look at the Main Menu screen and see it that sparks any memories.

 

Ah, yes. The game consists of 15 campaign missions. Everything else on the way to the platinum can be done in a custom game with unlimited money. There's a tutorial, but I got bored with it about a third of the way through. It's way too long and probably not that useful. This is the kind of game where you learn by fucking up, just like real life. (I think the proper term is "trial-and-error.") Now, each campaign mission can be completed on any difficulty, but I found most of them to be long and fairly challenging. You're usually tasked with completing multiple objectives, but the game doesn't tell you what the next objective will be, so you may or may not be prepared. Often, the objectives require you to play the game in an unintuitive or counterproductive way, so you can almost think of them as additional challenges.

 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I didn't even describe what kind of game this is. If you haven't played any of the other games in the Tropico series (I didn't even know there were any games before Tropico 4), this is a city-building and management simulator. Your main goal is to produce a sustainable economy, which you do through industry and trade, and remain in power. The only way you can really lose the game from what I can remember is by losing an election. (Although, realistically, you also have to worry about running out of money. I don't think you can lose the game simply by being in the negative, but it sure makes it difficult to do anything when you don't have any money and are spiraling deeper and deeper into debt. Also like real life.)

 

In some ways, this is a one-size-fits-all kind of game, meaning that once you have a method that works on one map, you can recreate it on the next. I had a general "plantation grid" that I'd almost always use (essentially, each type of plantation packed tightly together and a few Teamster Officers on either end to transport goods) at the start of each mission to get my economy rolling. You could also try to specialize by having only one or two goods, but the main way you make money in this game is by trading (either buying low and selling high or exporting your excessive goods), so variety is good. You aren't always guaranteed to have a trade route for every product. There are certain limitations on some maps, though. For example, some soils are better than others for growing certain crops. If you really want to have (or need) sugar, but it doesn't grow well near your starting location, you'll have to decide if it's better to import it, build a plantation very far away from the rest of your city, or deal with decreased production. You'll also have to decide how many plantations you'll want. I found that one was usually enough some some crops, but others needed two or even three to keep industries active. If you aren't producing tobacco fast enough to keep the cigar factory chugging, you'll essentially burning money. And that, guys, is the biggest challenge of this game. You're going to be starving for money A LOT. I don't know if I'm just bad at this, but I spent the majority of my time waiting to have enough money to build my next object. It was very rare that I could just continuously expand. The developers really want you to take it slowly, add one or two buildings at a time, and then adjust accordingly. If you try to do too much at once, you'll never get out of the red.

 

Fortunately, the game does a good job at tracking your economy. There's a lot of micromanagement here if you want it. You can increase the budget of each building to make them more efficient, upgrade buildings as you see fit, and change policies to affect how your citizens act and feel about you. It's a lot to keep track of.

 

I want to talk about how I messed up. Each campaign is long. Some of them took me several attempts. There's a trophy for completing each of them, but a separate trophy for completing all 15. What I didn't understand was how the save system works in this game. I got 14 campaigns done, but the last one was giving me a hard time. I decided to take a break from the story mode and play on the custom maps for some of the miscellaneous trophies; however, the developers patched the game so that you can no longer get trophies if you change the settings to unlimited money. No problem if you own a physical version of the game, right? Just delete the patch, play offline, and get your trophies. NO. Do NOT do this. Or, if you ARE going to do it, FINISH THE CAMPAIGN MAPS FIRST. Why? Because it will absolutely corrupted your save. I had to do ALL FOURTEEN MAPS (PLUS the one that was giving me fits) AGAIN. We are talking FORTY EXTRA HOURS I HAD TO PUT INTO THIS GAME. It would've been even longer but I had fortunately made a couple backup saves right before beating a couple missions. I was afraid loading these would corrupt my save again, but it was a risk I was willing to make. Had I done this for EVERY map (instead of overwriting older ones), I might've saved myself this headache. Believe me when I say that the day I retire from trophy hunting, it will be because of games like this. I was liking it, but that was absolutely demoralizing and I have no one to blame but myself.

 

I finished with 120 hours of gameplay, so I'm slapping the BULLSHIT stamp on the PSNP guide estimate on this one. You are not finishing this in 30 hours. However, BECAUSE I did enjoy this game (up until a certain point), even if you subtract off the 40 extra hours I put into it, I will begrudgingly say it's worth its current asking price. This is a quality title, even if I will go to my grave saying I despise it and that Tropico 5 was a better overall experience.

 

I'd also say this is harder than a 4/10.

[Taruta13]

Wow, that really bites. I feel bad for you, Cass. I don't have any other words. I am so glad I am not touching the Tropico series because I hate city simulation.

[Cassylvania]

1 hour ago, Taruta13 said:

Wow, that really bites. I feel bad for you, Cass. I don't have any other words. I am so glad I am not touching the Tropico series because I hate city simulation.

 

It pales in comparison to Cites: Skylines anyway. (And NO, everybody. I am NOT playing the recently released remastered version of that game. Somebody else can go chasing blue tornadoes.)

 

Alright. I'm off to wizard school or something. You know what's next.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Cassylvania

[Taruta13]

Oh, you're playing THAT? I can't wait to see your review, as I just bought that game.

[Cassylvania]

Platinum #364 - Bee Simulator

 

Elden Ring. Hogwarts Legacy. 13 Sentinels. These are just a few of the games I could've been playing. Instead, I tried to justify a $5 purchase I made a year ago, not knowing this would eventually go free on PS+ Extra. After playing it, I'm not even sure it's worth that.

 

I wasn't expecting a masterpiece here. I didn't expect something as zany as Goat Simulator or as wholly unique as PS2's Mister Mosquito, but now I think the world needs another game like that. This was just bland. As soon as you realize you're playing an educational game, you know you're in for a bad time.

 

I'm a cynical person, but I know every game is not made for me. This was probably made for 5-8 year olds (except for the racing challenges, which were made to torture your worst enemies). They even got 5-8 year olds to do the voice acting. (I'm kidding, but it is cringeworthy. Every character sounds like a teacher doing animal voices while reading a book to the class.) This is both the best and worst part of the game. Yes, the voices are not good, but they're so not good that I was laughing the whole time. You can amuse yourself by trying to guess how many VAs they got to do the voices. My guess is two and at least one is related to the developer.

 

The graphics are...not great, I'd say. They're OK. Things look fine from a distance, but you can see pop-in while you're moving and low quality textures when you get up close to an object. It's a shame too because that should be the best part of a bug game, you know? The very first thing I tried to do is land on a deer's head. There's some weird collision in this game too, and the camera is not your friend. I also don't like how there's no transition between loading areas. It's simple stuff like that that we take for granted in other titles, but it really makes a game look unprofessional when it's not there.

 

Perhaps the most disappointing part of the graphics are the people. It's copypasta everywhere. There are like three female models in this entire game. It's the same people wherever you go. The entire game takes place in a park, but there is at least a little variety there. There's an amusement, a zoo, a boathouse, and a lot of picnic tables, which is good because you'll need sugar from the food lying around to keep your energy high. It's a pain flying around without nitro ("beetro"). With few exceptions, though, human models just repeat the same few frames of animation. They never deviate from that, no matter the time of day or what you do to them. (OK, some of them will lightly swat at you, but it doesn't do anything.) Can you sting them? Sure, but all you get is a pathetic sound effect. There's no physical reaction. It makes this world feel lifeless, which I know isn't what the developers were going for.

 

Anyway, I got my order of operations wrong. I usually start with the story. In this game, you play as...Beatrice, Buzz, Jackie. Does it matter? I think you get to name your character, but Beescuit is the default name, which was good enough for me. Your main objective is to fly around and collect pollen from flowers and bring it back to your hive. There are various challenges you can do along the way, but most of them break down to a simple QTE or Simon Says. I played on Easy, so maybe it's different on a higher difficulty, but I was bored out of my mind doing these. Some of the races are bullshit because of the wonky flight controls, but I was longing for them just to have a modicum of challenge. You'll probably have seen everything this game has to offer after an hour of playing, but it still makes you keep playing if you want to beat the game and earn the platinum.

 

The controls are decent, for the most part. My biggest complaint is landing. The bee just "sticks" to the ground if you get close, which sometimes isn't what you want to do. Sometimes you just want to fly close to the ground so you can sting something. For whatever reason, the bee sometimes has a hard time with this. They also inverted the controls on the fast travel screen for some reason. On the top row, left and right are reversed. It's weird and I'm not even sure how they achieved that. I didn't find the races as hard as some people, but one mistake will usually ruin you.

 

I'm disappointed, but moreso in myself than the game. This game knew what it wanted to be. It's whimsical and kid-friendly. The music is relaxing and it actually can be fun whipping around and flying through rings, despite what Superman 64 would have you believe. If you want to learn that bears and salamanders are dangerous to bees but cows and seals (?) are not, this is the game for you. And since bees ARE one of the most important creatures on this planet and they are in trouble (something the game doesn't shy away from discussing and integrates into the plot), I guess I should support its existence. This is better than the "edutainment" games I had as a kid. The problem is that every kid plays Fortnite and Call of Duty, so who is going to want to play Bee Simulator?

 

I recommend this game to nobody. Just play Mister Mosquito if you want your bug point-of-view fix. It's probably less realistic than this game, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting. And if you want to learn more about bees, pick up a book or go outside. They're the tiny things that sting.

 

There. I went this entire review without making a bee pun. You're welcome.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Cassylvania

[Taruta13]

I don't see the platinum icon for Bee Simulator. Did you accidentally paste it as an image instead of an image link? The forum probably deleted it because it was an aimage and therefore formatted.

[realm722]

On 2/17/2023 at 11:21 AM, Cassylvania said:

I want to talk about how I messed up. Each campaign is long. Some of them took me several attempts. There's a trophy for completing each of them, but a separate trophy for completing all 15. What I didn't understand was how the save system works in this game. I got 14 campaigns done, but the last one was giving me a hard time. I decided to take a break from the story mode and play on the custom maps for some of the miscellaneous trophies; however, the developers patched the game so that you can no longer get trophies if you change the settings to unlimited money. No problem if you own a physical version of the game, right? Just delete the patch, play offline, and get your trophies. NO. Do NOT do this. Or, if you ARE going to do it, FINISH THE CAMPAIGN MAPS FIRST. Why? Because it will absolutely corrupted your save. I had to do ALL FOURTEEN MAPS (PLUS the one that was giving me fits) AGAIN. We are talking FORTY EXTRA HOURS I HAD TO PUT INTO THIS GAME. It would've been even longer but I had fortunately made a couple backup saves right before beating a couple missions. I was afraid loading these would corrupt my save again, but it was a risk I was willing to make. Had I done this for EVERY map (instead of overwriting older ones), I might've saved myself this headache. Believe me when I say that the day I retire from trophy hunting, it will be because of games like this. I was liking it, but that was absolutely demoralizing and I have no one to blame but myself.

 

I finished with 120 hours of gameplay, so I'm slapping the BULLSHIT stamp on the PSNP guide estimate on this one. You are not finishing this in 30 hours. However, BECAUSE I did enjoy this game (up until a certain point), even if you subtract off the 40 extra hours I put into it, I will begrudgingly say it's worth its current asking price. This is a quality title, even if I will go to my grave saying I despise it and that Tropico 5 was a better overall experience.

 

I'd also say this is harder than a 4/10.

 

Cassy... 

 

 

I've had Tropico 6 on my physical shelf for damn near a year now. I thoroughly enjoyed Tropico 5 from several years ago and whenever I got that city simulator/building itch I was going to break it out of its emergency case as I figured it'd do the job. Your review helped reaffirm several of my suspicions with the PSNP guide. 30 hours? The fastest 100% times didn't quite line up with that. I think I'll now when I eventually do get around to tackling the game is 1) Look up what objectives are asked on each map so I'm not completely blindsided by an industry I totally ignored and have to end up chasing it with zero infrastructure in place. This happened to me far too much in Tropico 5 and reading your review gave me PTSD flashbacks. 2) DON'T MESS WITH THOSE DAMN PATCHES. I DO have a physical copy of the game. Maybe I'll do all the infinite money ones first and then save the campaign for last? Heck, I may wanna bug you for the multiplayer trophy (tho based on the review I imagine you've deleted the game already). Reviews like these are why I love the trophy cabinet section of this forum as it's the only sorta 1st hand accounts of the journey you can get compared to everywhere else. 

 

I'm very excited about the inevitable 13 Sentinels Review.

[Cassylvania]

23 minutes ago, realm722 said:

I've had Tropico 6 on my physical shelf for damn near a year now. I thoroughly enjoyed Tropico 5 from several years ago and whenever I got that city simulator/building itch I was going to break it out of its emergency case as I figured it'd do the job. Your review helped reaffirm several of my suspicions with the PSNP guide. 30 hours? The fastest 100% times didn't quite line up with that.

 

I essentially earned the platinum twice. Even then, I think it would take me at least 50-60 hours to platinum it a third time. Some of those campaign maps will take an entire play session, and you'll likely have to restart a few because you can't pull yourself out of debt. Even if you play on the fastest speed, you're often just waiting around for stuff to happen. I would be thoroughly impressed if somebody could finish under 30 hours.

 

23 minutes ago, realm722 said:

1) Look up what objectives are asked on each map so I'm not completely blindsided by an industry I totally ignored and have to end up chasing it with zero infrastructure in place.

 

It would help. I think your first objective on every map should just be to build a stable economy. There usually aren't objectives that would require you to sabotage that.

 

23 minutes ago, realm722 said:

2) DON'T MESS WITH THOSE DAMN PATCHES. I DO have a physical copy of the game. Maybe I'll do all the infinite money ones first and then save the campaign for last? Heck, I may wanna bug you for the multiplayer trophy (tho based on the review I imagine you've deleted the game already). Reviews like these are why I love the trophy cabinet section of this forum as it's the only sorta 1st hand accounts of the journey you can get compared to everywhere else.

 

I have it on physical disc, so just let me know. Only takes a couple minutes.

 

You'll be fine if you just finish the campaign first. I just got antsy and wanted to jump around. Big mistake.

 

23 minutes ago, realm722 said:

I'm very excited about the inevitable 13 Sentinels Review.

 

If the game wasn't 40 hours long, I'd be done by now. Oh, wait. I could've been doing that instead of platinuming Tropico 6 a second time.

 

46 minutes ago, Taruta13 said:

I don't see the platinum icon for Bee Simulator. Did you accidentally paste it as an image instead of an image link? The forum probably deleted it because it was an aimage and therefore formatted.

 

Huh, I'll try to fix it. The image is actually kinda cool... bee-lieve it or not.

 

...Sorry.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Cassylvania