Willythom88's Backlogged and Stagnant

willythom88 · June 7, 2018

Now that I've started reviewing my 100%'s, I have them listed in the spoiler below along with links directly to them. Please enjoy!

Rules for my backlog

Spoiler

I'm holding myself to a few rules.

1) No more checking sales. I find that I'm more excited to check sales and anticipate the games I buy than actually experience them. Between all of my consoles, I have well over 800 games I need to go back and completely finish. It's not just about being a completionist, I don't expect to platinum or 100% everything. I do expect myself to try.

2) Only new games I can get have to be for the Switch. As it's my newest system, I haven't played much on it. At the moment I'm playing Star OCean: First Departure R, but I'm holding myself to not renting any games from my library unless they are for the switch. Which leads me to my final rule.

3) I need to review everything I play and complete. By adhering to this, it will force me to really try and do as much as possible, therefore giving every game every chance I can before cutting the cord. I will review games I don't finish, but I need to justify not finishing it (tioo hard, too long, too bad, etc.).

Beyond that, I want to hold myself to this so I actually play things. I'll post my reviews here, and go from there. I will soon be starting the ABC's of Unstarted Games competition, so I won't be posting any reviews until that time. Time to finally play these things and enjoy myself without wondering what I'm missing out on!

2020 Wrap Up
2020 Titles I Didn't Plat Reviews

Complete Review Scores (PS4):
Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition - 7/10
Sleeping Dogs: The Year of the Snake - 5/10
Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare at North Point - 7/10
Timothy Vs The Aliens - 5/10
Jazzpunk - 6/10
Never Alone: Foxtales DLC - 6/10
Inside - 9/10

Last Day of June - 5/10
One Upon Light - 5/10
Marvel's Spider-man - 7/10
Marvel's Spider-man - The City That Never Sleeps - 4/10
Bulb Boy - 6/10
Dust: An Elysian Tail - 7/10
Concrete Genie - 8/10
Shiny - 3/10
Yoku's Island Express - 6/10
Dragon Quest XI - 7/10
I Am Setsuna - 5/10
Woodle Tree Adventures - 5/10
Toren - 5/10
Jackbox Party Pack 3 - 6/10

Complete Review Scores (PS Vita):
Letter Quest - 6/10

For Non Trophy Related Games Reviews - https://backloggedandstagnant.blogspot.com/

Edited March 10, 2021 by willythom88
Adjusted to final format

willythom88 · June 13, 2018

Ok, finally finished the basic post. Got all my back log up. Anything I didn't list is either forsaken to the pits of Nevergonnatouchagain or I'm on the fence about.

willythom88 · July 21, 2018

First proper update on the ones I've completed since starting this. I'm trying to follow a template so each one is easy to read, and to treat each one more like a recommendation than anything else. I'm going to try to start updating once every three games or so, so the posts aren't as long.

Spoiler

What Is It?: A very traditional, and very humorous point and click adventure.
Final Thoughts: It's a great game honestly, and a good way to kill an afternoon.It would be nice if it were a bit longer, but it's pretty great how it is.
Hardest Part: Really the worst part is the myriad of missables the game has, buit with a decent guide it's nothing worth sweating.
How are the trophies?: Pretty much par for the course for a point and click game, except there's not an overwhelmingly high amount of story related trophies. Plenty of missables though, again.
Final Score: 7/10

What Is It?: A lovely and peaceful game about exploring an island, completing fetch quests, and going all Mary Poppins everytime you begin to plummet towards the ground below. A genuinely lovely game.
Final Thoughts: I loved this game. As previously mentioned it's mostly just fetching things for one character, and most of those things are pretty difficult to find. Not difficult as in hard, so much as difficult as in they only appear under specific circumstances.
Hardest Part: Fishing, no contest. Fishing itself is super easy, but many of the fish you need to catch are uncommon, and can require a good deal of luck. You can exploit buying the fish, and then just catching any random old fish to get the trophy to pop, but honestly, some of them are even ridiculously rare when you do that. Since stock at the various sellers only pops up once a day, I would only do this under the most extreme of circumstances (Prince fish is a good example)
How are the trophies?: Thorough. They do a really good job of basically having you do everything, though I was a bit disappointed there was nothing for planting all of the trees on the island. Oh well.
Final Score: 8/10

What Is It?: This is a fun, short little platformer about a robot on an alien planet. Real quick platinum, and the game itself is pretty fun.
Final Thoughts: I didn't even buy this for the quick platinum, I just really enjoy the game. There's nothing particularly unheard of here but it does what it sets out to pretty well.
Hardest Part: Honestly, some of the later sections can be frustrating, gameplay wise. None of the trophies are really anything to worry about.
How are the trophies?: Honestly, there's only a couple story related trophies, and everything else requires you to go out of your way to do things. One thing I really like is there's no collectibles, but really the game is so short it's hard to really say the trophies stood out.
Final Score: 8/10

What Is It?: The final game in the puzzle platformer series Trine. However, it's much different than the others as the focus is on the puzzle platforming more than anything else. It's also a really pretty game, but...
Final Thoughts: The gameplay isn't great. There's a lot of collision issues and the physics is kind of garbage. When it works, it's ok, and when it doesn't, it's evil and relentless.
Hardest Part: Trophies are all pretty easy. I thought the hardest part, besides getting the Trineangles (which a video guide helps with) is the trophy, A Silence of Whispers. There's an easy exploit here though where you can just stand on the head that slams down and it will kill most of the enemies for you.
How are the trophies?: Beat everything. Collect everything. Honestly, the PS3 version of Trine 2 had a more imaginative list.
Final Score: 5/10

What Is It?: Your guess is as good as mine. No, but seriously, it's a series of puzzle boxes that the player must crack open basically, through some weird and occasionally wonderful means.
Final Thoughts: It's a decent way to kill an afternoon, but honestly, it gets a bit too "out there" at times.
Hardest Part: The controls. I'm sure with a Move controller, it's great, but with a DS4, it feels clumsy and cumbersome.
How are the trophies?: So, most of them are just for finishing the game and each of the games stages, but each stage also has a trophy for doing somethign special in it. Only one of them, involving cooking, is even the least bit hard, and it's not if you're following a guide or know how to solve the puzzle it's tied to.
Final Score: 6/10

What Is It?: A game where you push a sticky ball around and collect objects, getting bigger and bigger, until you can consume the cosmos.
Final Thoughts: The controls are unwelcoming, but not a total turn off. For a condensed version of Katamari, they not only did a good job, but they also fixed some issues I've had with previous games.
Hardest Part: For most it will be the controls. The trophies aren't really all that difficult, though if you hate collectibles, this game will beat you over the head with them.
How are the trophies?: Stupid. So the final trophy, and I assure you it will be the last one if you see it through, requires either an understanding of how to exploit the currency in the game, or an incredibly stupid grind. Either way, most of the game is collecting things, and that the gold is what it is, it's not really worth the effort.
Final Score: 5/10



What Is It?: A very run of the mill point and click adventure, but it does manage to be largely fun to play. I have only completed the first episode at this time.
Final Thoughts: Despite really liking the VITA, I don't like games that rely heavily on touch screen controls. This game requires some finally tuned tapping, and frankly, tapping on tiny things only to accidentally hit the wrong thing repeatedly is annoying. However, beyond this, the story is interesting, and it's not too long so the first episode will end shortly after the frustration kicks in.
Hardest Part: Missables folks. Missables.
How are the trophies?: Again, pretty run of the mill. Do things you wouldn't normally do, couple story related trophies, you get it.
Final Score: 6/10


What Is It?: You are a cat. You are upset. So you knock things off of shelves and tables and the like. Things you knock over get increasingly absurd. Repeat.
Final Thoughts: So the gimmick is pretty strong here. Unfortunately, due to the length to Plat, it doesn't hold up the last few hours. There are a ton of collectibles, but you don't have to get them all, and in general, it's a moderately enjoyable experience.
Hardest Part: One timed trophy thats really tight unless you play on a certain Holiday themed level.
How are the trophies?: Ehhhhhh....meh. So I like the handful of creative ones, like staying in air for a certain amount of time, but these are all really easy and don't amount to much of your play time. Generally speaking, its a collectable and action repetition heavy game. Collect these thigns, do this thing this many times. It's not very imaginative, but it's not so overwhelming that it's annoying.
Final Score: 6/10


What Is It?: So it's part movie montage, part vignette, and part point and click style game. It doesn't play like most point and click style games, and it's all more akin to a first person movie.
Final Thoughts: I don't know. I applaud how experimental it is, but honestly, the fact that it requires multiple viewings (or maybe I'm just an idiot) to get what is happening or what the context is, results in a game that is just confusing more than anything else.
Hardest Part: Bunch of missables, the head movement is, I believe, meant to bne realistic, and it can be a little off putting at first. Really, with a guide though, nothing here is difficult.
How are the trophies?: There are some issues here. The worst offender is the really out of place collectibles. They feel so thrown in, like the dev didn't feel like Virginia was "game" enough", I do enjoy the trophies that require some foresight (setting up a trophy by picking up something seemingly random early on only to see how it changes the game, slightly, later is neat, though not particularly grand). The dumbest is that one of them requires you play the game twice, but the ending is always the same. It's nice because, again, you may need to watch a second time to get whats happening, but over all, it feels kind of pointless beyond getting the trophy.
Final Score: 4/10


What Is It?: A runner style game mixed with a Jetpack Joyride style mini game that results in something between mediocre and awful.
Final Thoughts: This game is just a mess. Sometimes the avatar would stop grabbing ledges, resulting in deaths. Collision is just off a hair, resulting in deaths that look like you should have been able to dodge them, but I mean, I guess I hit it? If you upload your cross save, at least from Vita to PS4, it changes all your in game challenges, even saying you completed some of them. It doesn't matter, as the value you need to reach in some of the challenges will occasionally change to the value of another challenge, resulting in needing to do ridiculous things like, in my case, finish 40 levels naked. Also, there's a feature where if you get turned around, and start going the wrong way, the character will auto turn around (as you can't without wall jumping). Unfortunately, he doesn't always get the memo, and will occasionally run in the wrong direction and fall off a cliff. Or through the game world infinitely until you restart the level.
Hardest Part: Most of the time I spent fighting the game. Now, in the games defense, these issues seemed to only happen on the Vita, so if you're going to play it, play it on the PS4. However, in the game, the worst part was the Jetpack Joyride style Pegasus runs, which are often incredibly narrow, and it feels more like playing Flappy Bird than Jetpack honestly.
How are the trophies?: Nothing special, they aren't great by any means but they're generally speaking fine.
Final Score: 3/10

Edited August 23, 2018 by willythom88

willythom88 · August 23, 2018

Hey, forgot to do this again!

Spoiler

What Is It?: A "walking sim" where you learn the mysterious happenings that took place in a now abandoned town.
Final Thoughts: So this game is really interesting and everything. If I had one complaint it's the ridiculous walking speed. You'll get used to it, but it takes a minute before the slow pace feels ok. You can "run", but like. Meh. The story is very interesting though.
Hardest Part: The Completionist trophy is annoying, as is the one where you have to listen to the radios first. However, the completionist trophy is worse. There's a ton of stuff to pay attention to, and frankly it gets overwhelming sometimes when following a guide. On top of that, you have to pay full attention to the radio and phone conversations (aka, not walk away in the middle), and there are television monitors that play on a loop. Fortunately, I got it, and I did it by waiting for the message to restart (it happens during the beeping noise, not when the announcer starts saying the numbers again).
How are the trophies?: The bright side to the Completionist trophy is that the story is good and it makes sure you fully explore it. The rest of weird collectibles for the most part that require you to do things like look at maps and books. Overall, it's not hard by any means. Just a bit overwhelming when you consider the amount of things you need to do.
Final Score: 7/10




What Is It?: The first action RPG in a long running series of turn based RPGs.
Final Thoughts: This game is fantastic. The action is fluid, the world is gorgeous, and the characters are mostly great. The fact that so many different things are mapped to the X button is highly annoying though, as it means you'll often jump when you try to pick something up or crawwl through a space. Also, some of the dialogue is just terrible a lot of the time. While it's fun listening to the banter back and forth, some of it is super corny. Also, if you're playing the Royal pack, get ready to hear the same conversation on the boat every time you drive it. Every. Single. Time.
Hardest Part: The trophy list is painfully easy. The fight with Ifrit on Normal is honestly easier than a lot of the fights on easy. The hardest trophy in the main game (haven't finished the DLC yet) is honestly the angler mastery one. This is only because I hate. H.A.T.E fishing in video games. From Okami to Yonder, I hate it. Fortunately, it was an easy one to wrap up. The hardest part of the game was probably Chapter 13, but even then it was more tedious than out right difficult.
How are the trophies?: They're ok. So, the DLC trophies are honestly a lot better, in terms of getting you to do things. The main game has you doing a lot of boring stuff and ignoring a lot of really cool stuff. There are interesting collectibles and a special dungeon that aren't mentioned and should be, along with some opportunities for making it a bit more difficult. Not to mention that since the July update of last year, Adamantoise is pathetically easy, and his was the most daunting of the hunts (so far, there are a couple I haven't done yet that look pretty intimidating).
Final Score: 7/10

Currently working on:
Final Fantasy XV DLC (I liked Gladiolus's episode, and Prompto's is alright. I don't much care for Comrades though.)

Edited August 23, 2018 by willythom88
- Adding spoiler tags

willythom88 · September 5, 2018

Spoiler

What is it?: A puzzle game where you play a girl who can become a ghost.
Final Thoughts: Very underwhelming. The toughest puzzles are more annoying then fun, and the story is merely ok. not much here honestly.
Hardest Part: Invisible Spiders...
How Are the Trophies?: Pretty okay, honestly. Few story, mostly missables for locating certain hidden things. Nothing I would call too difficult, but they do a good job breaking up the mundane gameplay.
Final Score: 5 out of 10


What Is It?: A first person exploration game that incorporates light shooter and horror elements together.
Final Thoughts: The game is ok, but it's very easy. There weren't any real challenges, except for a few parts where you couldn't interact with plant life (though the game throws you a bone with this). Honestly, if it had been a bit more difficult, it would've been better. however, the platforming is fantastic and worth the whole playthrough. The horror elements aren't really horror so much as they're monsters, but the game does some interesting things with the concept that make it more enticing than it would have been otherwise.
Hardest Part: The third and fourth levels are frustrating for different reasons, but they are the hardest parts of the game. Unfortunately, it's just because the level design is a bit lacking and repetitive.
How Are the Trophies?: Collect things and beat the game. There are a bunch of collectibles and they are well hidden, but honestly, it's just really boring. Nothing about the trophy list made the game more exciting.
Final Score: 7 out of 10



What Is It?: A short aside from Telltales Clementine fronted Walking Dead point and click games starring Michonne from the comics.
Final Thoughts: The brief story length (it's very short in comparison to pretty much everything else TellTale has done over the last few years) is actually kind of a blessing. The story is good, but it's even better because there's no needless fluffing of plot points. It's very get in, get out. The characters are great, the arts great, but it lags horrendously on my new (for me; I bought it used) PS3, which is an unfortunate issue that is well known amongst players on that system.
Hardest Part: The aforementioned lag is terrible, especially in episode 3.
How Are The Trophies?: If you've never played a TellTale game, they follow the studios modern conceit of giving you a trophy every chapter for completing it. No platinum in this one.
Final Score: 6 out of 10



What Is It?: A game where the player controls a hole that they need to fill with items to grow it in size and solve puzzles.
Final Thoughts: This game gets compared to Katamari, and that fits to an extent. While I can see it because of the gimmick of consuming to grow your avatar in size, the way the stages are set up makes them feel more like mini-games than proper levels. If you've played GNOG or Frosbisher Says, it reminds me more of those. A mode where you can move around Donut County would be nice, but c'est la vie. That being said, it's a really fun game. The story is funny, the game play is funny. all in all a treat and I'm glad I pre-ordered it. Way better than Hole.io, that's for sure.
Hardest Part: Before reading up on it, the Bandit trophy was frustrating. However, once you know what you're doing, it's real easy. The tie then goes to the Flawless and Secret Soup trophies, and honestly they both took two tries to get.
How Are The Trophies?: They're ok. Not much in the way of story related ones but they seem much harder than they are. They don't seem hard, mind you, but most of them can be gotten on accident. They're fun, but if you want a challenge, you might want to look else where, as the whole list is pretty simple, once you know how to do it.
Final Score: 7 out of 10



What Is It?: A puzzle game that is heavy on exploration, and you can play as a bird! You can fly and stuff, and....
Final Thoughts: Puzzles aren't very deep, and the game is mostly about atmosphere, but all in all it's pretty good. Honestly, if you're into these atmospheric types of games, it's one of the better ones. The environments aren't very different, though the dungeons are different enough to be fairly interesting. The ending is pretty cryptic, and frankly, if you're sick of ambiguity in your games, this is one to avoid.
Hardest Part: Finding some of the hidden objects the trophies require without a guide is kind of annoying, since the environments often have little areas tucked away here and there. Also, the Hide and Seek trophy is easy to miss, but with a guide, it's pretty easy.
How Are The Trophies?: Impressive, honestly. While they aren't hard, they do a good job of dragging you around the map and letting you experience everything.
Final Score: 7 out of 10



What Is It?: A 2.5d puzzle platformer that is heavily derivative of Inside.
Final Thoughts: This game took me over a year to platinum, despite a very quick platinum time, because I simply don't like it. Towards the end, the puzzles get moderately interesting, but for the most part it's just a drab, unfeeling thing that is more interested in punishing the player than it is developing any sort of individuality. Dying doesn't always feel fair, or even justified. After getting one trophy, I spent the next 45 minutes staring at my character, who had disappeared except for a lantern and a hat. I can see, though, why others might enjoy this, and while it may be too late, I'll go ahead and just leave it at not my cup of tea.
Hardest Part: I'll be honest, some of the puzzles can be kind of tough, though nothing a guide can't get you past.
How Are The Trophies?: Most of the trophies are related to doing little things or finding little areas. There are only four silver trophies and the rest are gold. Story related are silver, not story gold. The problem is the missables don't really ask much of you. Just go to a certain spot, or do a certain thing. The worst of the lot is the first trophy you get, but the rest are just not very exciting.
Final Score: 4 out of 10

DragonQuest238 · September 6, 2018

Nice to see you doing this!

Spoiler

Tried to platinum Trine 3 and got a nasty glitch that ate up some of the levels and I lost those collectibles forever. Be careful.

I agree with your opinion of Virginia. If it wasn't a game starting with V, I would never have bought it. Having to play through the game twice without changing anything is ridiculous.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was my most recent platinum and I agree, the walking speed is ridiculous and you have to be very meticulous. I once ended up missing both a bird book and a map even though I had followed a video guide. The guide narrator said the game is forgiving when it comes to looking at those items, but some of the bird books are easy to miss as their front covers are hidden. I just looked at every colorful book.

Deponia is actually part one of a PC game series. They ported Chaos on Deponia, the second part, just recently so if you want to experience more Rufus and Glow(or whoever she is called), try that out.

willythom88 · January 27, 2020

Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition (PS4) - A Highly Muddled Masterpiece

For well over 40 hours, I have poured a lot of time into Wei Shen's adventures through the underbelly of Hong Kong. As an undercover cop attempting to infiltrate the dreaded Sun On Yee triad gang, this is a great adventure for sure. Unfortunately, it's also a messy experience who's faults simply can't be ignored. I'll review the main game first.

Story - 8/10

Spoiler

Sleeping Dogs tells the story of Wei Shen, a Hong Kong native who has come back after spending a lot of his life in the States. This is a great story that really knows how to create tension. For the most part, all the characters feel very unique, which is impressive considering how flat and cliche they all could have felt. Wei himself is a pretty likable character, and as far as protagonists go, he's very well fleshed out and carries a wide enough array of emotions to be a truly interesting person to spend a lot of time with.

This isn't to say that the story doesn't contain a few snags. From dates to missions escorting a VIP, the moments that are about building Wei's presence in the gang tend to feel fairly flat. It makes sense to dial down the tension to make the big moments feel bigger, but this feels more like going from 60 to 5 in a matter of seconds. That's not to say every mission where Wei is doing things for his gang family are bad. Far from it. But when they are, it's noticeable and makes the plot feel sluggish instead of relaxed.

Fortunately, those moments aren't too plentiful. The dates actually lead to some pretty funny stuff later on, there are favors and random events that range from grindy to also providing a good deal of humor as well. All around, the story is definitely the games high point, and thanks to expertly crafting a series of highs and lows to really flesh out Wei's story, this is a fantastic tale.

Gameplay - 6/10

Spoiler

Gameplay, unlike the story, is a bit less enthralling. Let's begin with combat. Fights play out in a very similar style to the Arkham games. Wei is absurdly fast, and as you unlock more points towards your Triad skills, find some statues for a martial arts master from Wei's youth, and unlock more Cop upgrades, Wei becomes a force to be reckoned with. Early on, you will be instructed on how to counter. Much like in Batman, when an enemy has a red outline, a quick tap of the triangle will have Wei spin around and deal with the impending doom. One of the games more irritating features is if you get too button happy, Wei will enter a crouching stance, and look back and forth, confused. This wastes a few seconds and leaves you open to attack. However, this issue goes away as you get better with the combat controls.

Gunplay however, is less enjoyable. This is two fold issue, aiming, and enemies actually dying. Aiming is largely okay, but the reticule isn't the best gauge at times when it comes to actually making contact. Many guns have an awful recoil, so even if you take time and line up your shot, making sure the reticule is red, you will still find yourself missing entirely. Also, enemies tend to soak up bullets, and not every head shot will register correctly. Since guns are rare in Hong Kong, this means the instances where you are in a fire fight will often end up with you running out of bullets, at least until later. But even when you get used to the slightly off aim, you will often find shots are difficult to aim accurately, unless of course you sit there, standing up from your cover, and let the enemies shoot you to oblivion while you line up one headshot for what feels like an easy 15 seconds.

What would a GTA clone (and this very much is one) be with driving, and this is where the gameplay shines. There are a bunch of cars to unlock, and for the most part (having not driven every one of them) they feel very different from one another. Thanks to an abundance of story missions requiring their use, as well as races, you'll get plenty of time to find your favorites. Motorcycles aren't quite as fun in the races, as they have a tendency to clip a wall or park bench and spin in the air like a frisbess or come to a screaming hault. Worse yet for the races, they have a higher tendency it seems to throw you off, instantly ending the race. Cars do this too though, so it's not quite as safe.

While these three make up the bulk of the gameplay, there are a ton of extras. Included in the Definitive Edition main game are some DLC. Two of the bigs one, Death by a Thousand Cuts and Shaolin Showdown, are single event scenarios tasking you with taking down a certain amount of enemies in a single fight. Of the two, Shaolin Showdown had more enemies overall, but Thousand Cuts was for more gratifying to complete, thanks to a special little something the devs threw in to up the challenge. Wheels of Fury is another DLC added to the main game that is by far the best of the three mission oriented ones, and the final payoff helps immensely in the races you can use it in.

There is also an Enter the Dragon style DLC story entitled Zodiac Tournament that is fun, but fairly short. An intense, you guessed it, tournament, filled with some interesting plot points. Though it's not going to really wow you, it's an enjoyable bit of content. Couple this with favors a, small side quests that are mostly fairly easy (save the Safe Delivery one) and there's a ridiculous amount to do. A personable favorite were drug busts. In these, you take out a bunch of thugs at a location, hack the security camera, then go to your safe house. You will then have to watch security footage to determine who the drug dealer is. It's very satisfying to hear "We got him! We got him!" after successfully tagging the dealer.

One of the things you will notice at the end of any mission is you are allocated points that go towards various stats. Your Face, Cop and Triad meters all level up based on specific actions. Actions of violence or deception level up your Triad meter, while Face level raises based on misc tasks you are completing around town or races completed. Cop points are unique in that you start with a set amount, and they get taken away if you mess up like stealing cars or hitting pedestrians. These feel completely unnecessary, and a single leveling system would have sufficed just fine. Since some skill trees (FACE!) have a lot more opportunities to level up, you'll likely find yourself scrounging for another skill tree (TRIAD!) to cap everything off. Further more, some of the skills are unlocked through collecting Jade statues, which, while mixing up the formula, means you'll be having to run back to North Point whenever you find one. This doesn't gel well with the others that can be earned across the board, even if the Jade statue moves are fairly different than the other unlocks.

Collectibles - 9/10

Spoiler

Collectibles come in a few different flavors. Lock boxes, health shrines, and security cameras. There are also an absurd amount of pieces of clothing you can buy or find in lock boxes. These can add benefits such as increasing your Triad points or discounting cars. They are bit annoying to drive around and locate, but if you aren't going for the Platinum, you can just grab whatever you need and not worry about collecting everything. Little hint, there's a gold store in the North Market, that sells the best and most expensive clothes in the game (all DLC outfits, and all overpowered for their respective bonuses).

Lock boxes are the most plentiful, having 100 to locate in the game. These usually house money and outfits, and there a ton of them in each district. They also offer a good mix to gameplay as some simply open, and some require you to play a small minigame to unlock them. It's mostly random, though towards the end of collecting them, most seemed to require being unlocked.

Cameras aren't nearly as useful and fit into more of a modern day take on collectibles, offering little in terms of reward. However, there aren't very many, with a total of around 26, resulting in an easy collection.

The best rewards comes from the Health shrines, which provide a boost to your health every 5 you collect. These are also, much like all the other collectibles, well hidden without being absurd. A problem with a lot of collectibles is they are hidden in ludicrous places for the sake of making them hard to find. In Sleeping Dogs, they are smartly placed so you will likely find a lot of them on accident. All collectibles also emit a light flashing glow, making them easier to find, but not blatantly handing you the answer to their location.

Technical and Design - 6/10

Spoiler

And now we get to the first of two real issues. Sleeping Dogs, fortunately, only crashed once on me. However, the AI, camera's, and some of the features included are not at their best.

Beginning with the AI, the world seems to be programmed to be constantly moving. And move it will. Not over anything, but hey, what's wrong with endlessly walking into a bush. Or someone on fire randomly falling from a bridge, or even the sky. A personal favorite was shooting an enemy and watching him springboard forward like his brain was holding down some sort of wait.

The camera is largely OK unless you are trying to reverse your car, or correct how your driving at all....or there's a cutscene. Because the camera sits in front of the car while reversing, it's hard to see anything in front of you. This might sound great, since you don't want to hit things, but since you will often are trying to put distance between you and something else when reversing, it's kind of difficult to do anything. The camera often gets stuck on the environment, and during cutscenes, it seems to do whatever it wants. One cutscene had me partially inside of Wei's mouth, and another had me so close to Wei and the person he was talking to, my entire TV screen was a nose and Wei's eyes.

One of the games more obnoxious traits is it's waypoint system. Arrows to off and on ramps are often vague, and the waypoints will often make drives take longer because they aim you down streets that are more out of the way. On the way to Victoria Park, there's a few three way intersections. These each have a small median in the middle of them. The waypoint system wants you to wrap around the median and then turn up, instead of just following the road up. It's very obnoxious, and while not a technical issue, it's just as annoying.

The game employs a low rent version of fast travel, where you can stop a taxi and pay them to transport you to one of a handful of spots around town. The issue here is that, one, there's not a lot of spots you can transported to, meaning you'll still end up hoofing it. Then, there's finding a taxi. Now taxis are everywhere, but you still need to locate one, and their appearance is random, meaning you'll often run around like a lunatic in the rain before you find one, and then your options are limited for where you want to go. It's not the end of the world, but it's annoying nonetheless.

Trophies - 6/10

Spoiler

Sleeping Dogs trophies are serviceable, but they lack much imagination. One trophy specifically has you do everything except the derbies, I believe. There's some inconsistency with the grades also. The trophies for getting all the clothes and cars should be silver, and if you're worried about points, the favors or the 15 gold medals could easily be bronze, or there could just be one bronze for the lock boxes instead of 3. However, it does the job and gets you to explore every nook and cranny.

Final Score - 7/10
Sleeping Dogs is a damn good game drowning in a lack of polish. The game came out originally in 2012, then the definitive version came out in 2014, so I'm a bit late to the party. Still, any fan of open worlds, third person shooting and melee fighting, should really appreciate what United Front was able to accomplish here.

Edited January 27, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · January 27, 2020

Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition - Year of the Snake (PS4) - A let down across the board

Ok, so instead of doing what I did above, it's been about a week since I played this. Also, the DLC features most of the same gameplay as the base game, so I won't spend too long on that. Here we go.

Story - 4/10

Spoiler

Year of the Snake takes place after the events of the main game, and thus contains spoilers. However, to summarize, there is a cult attempting to "destroy the world" on the new year, and Wei Shen needs to stop them. The story has a lot of potential, but unfortunately, nothing quite works. Plot points are meant to get you to drive around a lot, taking place mostly in the areas outside of North Point. It moves at such a fast pace and most of the new characters are goofy instead of scary.

Gameplay - 6/10

Spoiler

As previously noted, most of the gameplay is the same, though there are car bomb missions that do mix it up and provide an interesting break from doing the same thing over and over and over again. One mission in particular, that has you going to find multiple targets in a short distance, is actually pretty funny, and there's a hilariously brief favor in the game that's worth a chuckle. However, there's not a ton of new content to be explored, and it would be easy to mop up the plot in about an hour or two.

One brief aside to point out. Upon completing the final mission and popping the trophy for doing so, do not check your PSN before the mission completion marquee. I'm not sure if that's what did it, but a loud cracking noise would ring out every 30 seconds or so, and it spread to the main game. Fortunately turning it off and back on fixed that. Beyond that, there's no real technical issues.

Trophies - 4/10

Spoiler

Year of the Snake unfortunately does nothing interesting with it's trophies, and actually has a completely pointless collectible system thrown in, presumably to pad the run time. Yes, these are reflected by the in-game achievements, but it's obnoxiously empty to go and collect things that offer absolutely nothing to the player other than collecting them. The remainder are actually fairly well graded, and with the short overall time (I personally took 3 1/2 hours and I tend to take on the longer side), it's an easy enough 100%.

Final Score - 5/10

For how short it is, Year of the Snake is pretty inoffensive overall. But the story is pointless, and the trophies are just a micro version of the main games list.

Edited January 27, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · January 30, 2020

Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition - Nightmare At North Point (PS4) - The DLC we deserved

The final DLC I personally played, and the final stretch to my 100%, Nightmare at North Point is a lot of fun, and besides one little wrinkle, is definitely worth your time.

Story - 9/10

Spoiler

~~Smelly Cat~~ Smiley Cat has returned from the afterlife and stolen your date. Oh, and there's a bunch of demons running amok around North Point and the dead have risen. BUT YOUR DATE! This story is so well packed into it's short runtime that, relatively speaking, it's better than the original games. Condensed to a tight 7 story missions, this flows so well, and is humorous to boot. It also finds an ingeniuos way to tie into the main story despite being set amongst a demonic jail break. My only complaint is honestly it could have been a bit longer and more fleshed out, but it never overstays it's welcome, and the plot points are genuinely fun.

Gameplay - 7/10

Spoiler

Gameplay is largely the same as in the main game, but you won't be fighting too many Triad members in the process of completing the story. You will be fighting Jiang Shi and Yaoguai, two types of demons that Smiley Cat has brought back with him from Hell. There's one other possible enemy you could include, but to avoid spoilers, and because they aren't really a threat, I'll leave it at that.

Jiang Shi will be your primary opponent, and they are little more than cannon fodder, especially after you raise your new and improved face meter. However, they are fascinating in their own right, and with their ability to bite you, they can be something of an issue early on to deal with, or even in large groups. Yaoguai, however, can be extremely difficult, as you can't just beat them senseless. You either need a full face meter, or a peachwood sword to deal damag to them. Unfortunately, these swords are so plentiful, and your face meter raises extremely fast after collecting the hell shrines (the collectible for Nightmare), that they are rarely an issue, and at their worst moments, they're just annoying.

The aforementioned Hell Shrines are a far better collectible then the evidence bags in Year of the Snake, as there are fewer of them and the reward for finding them is basically becoming impossibly overpowered. You can still get swarmed pretty easy, but rectifying that is rarely an issue. Really, theo nly reason this doesn't rank higher is that the DLC is just a tad too easy, with only one or two "boss" confrontations presenting any sort of issue.

Trophies - 5/10

Spoiler

Let's just be blunt here. They did nothing particularly special with the trophies, which is largely fine. This continues the main games inconsistency with grades, however, and it's pretty obvious. Why is collecting all the Hell Shrines a silver, and yet completing all the stat rewards to Gold is a bronze, especially when you need to collect those hell shrines to unlock all the stat rewards. Frankly the stat rewards are just an okay inclusion across the entirety of Sleeping Dogs, but man, Nightmare gets them wrong. The stat reward for defeating 200 Jiang Shi is the worst offender, as this is a pretty steep grind, relatively speaking at least. Furthermore, when you consider that grapple kills with the face meter, and burning kills (which are random and the only way to avoid them is to not hit an enemy when your meters full) don't count, this is extremely frustrating. I had to fight them, and then run around when my meter filled until it ran out, just to make sure my kills counted. Beyond that, it's the same kind of stuff you got in Year of the Snake, just better cause it's an overall better experience.

Final Score - 7/10
Nightmare at North Point was actually how I wanted to walk away from Sleeping Dogs. I highly recommend if you're going for the 100% you do this last as it's as good as the main game, but in a condensed form. Follow a guide when going for the stat rewards, and try to work on them during the main story (it's much easier and something I wished I'd done). After everything in Sleeping Dogs, this was a great send off for sure.

willythom88 · February 5, 2020

Timothy Vs The Aliens (PS4) - Is this your first open world adventure? No? Then look elsewhere...

Timothy Vs The Aliens is a simple game. A good introduction to open world titles. But if you have played anything else that fits the open world genre, this is a pretty significant let down.

Story and Missions - 5/10

Spoiler

The story here is very simple, and it's not to the games detriment. There are Aliens. Timothy must slay them. Timothy is a "gangster", as much as Bugs Bunny in a pinstripe suit. The problem isn't with the paper thin story, but the sub par mission structure. Everything starts out simple enough, but once you leave the sewers, the game starts playing with ideas like driving and timed segments. These ideas never really stick around though, meaning you have to learn something you'll never use again, almost like the video game equivalent of getting married three times in three different wedding dresses all in one day. This is compounded by the games very short play time, though that also grants the benefit of not having to tolerate the controls very long. Speaking of...

Controls and Gameplay - 5/10

Spoiler

The controls aren't terrible. At least in combat. Aiming is unreliable, and often doesn't allow you to snap into it quickly. It's often better to have the enemy right on stop of you so you know the shots will connect. Fortunately, there are a nice selection of four weapons, each with their own perks. Your base weapon does awful damage, but has infinite ammo. The machine gun was the best overall, even helping in the final fight more than any of the others. The other weapon at your disposal is a slow-mo style power that was actually extremely useful, especially when the game packs you into a small arena and has six or more enemies in there with you. There aren't a lot of enemy types, but all of them are good are clearing small spaces in a short time, so this helps alot.

Movement is largely fine as well, though Timothy feels kind of stiff when he jumps. Driving a car, which you fortunately only have to do once, is awful. The car only turns when your accelerating, and the mission it's required for is time limited and has you quickly driving through very tight areas. Furthermore, your car can drive through nothing, and gets stuck on the most insignificant piece of scenery, like a bush or a crate, making this mission incredibly annoying and tedious to go through.

Adding to this, one mission has you at a pier. There are multiple instances where you need to jump onto floating planks or boats, and if you land in the water, you instantly die. This is made further confusing but the fact that falling in the water in the sewers only damages you a little, meaning that what? Timothy not only can't swim but has a sodium allergy, so only ocean water kills him?

Trophies and Collectibles - 4/10

Spoiler

In the collectibles department, Timothy vs the Aliens actually does a decent job. The cityscape isn't particularly large, but there are three collectibles one could find. Little aliens, some that increase your health, and two that increase your slow mo time. Then there's Otis' hot dogs, of which there are 60. They are all pretty well hidden, and the rewards for finding everything are actually pretty good, at least in the context of the game. I would recommend trying to find all of these even if there were no trophies tied to them.

The trophies, however, are a mess. There is absolutely no sense of pacing here, and trophies are doled out for the most inane things. Entering the last dungeon will score you two trophies, one for getting to the entrance, and one for actually entering it. This is clearly a game that shouldn't have a platinum (if Sony is going to continue to have some games have them and some games not, but that's a discussion for another time), and the trophy list makes that painfully obvious. You get trophies for getting keys to places where you'll get trophies for completing things. Even in a world of Ratalaika games pumping out subpar (usually, not always) games to pander to the trophy whore in us all (I'm guilty to, no judgement), they at least have some degree of consistency. Timothy vs the Aliens seems like it's following story beats, but in reality, a lot of the trophies are just plopped in wherever they can fit, and it's disappointing to say the least)

Final Score - 5/10
Timothy Vs the Aliens is a good starter open world game. For younger players, this is perfectly fine. Anyone with any experience in the genre though is likely to find it tedious despite being short and amateurish despite being mostly polished.

willythom88 · February 8, 2020

Jazzpunk (PS4) - Hahahahahahaha...hahaha....hahaha...ha...ha...heh....that was funny

In the interest of full transparency, I did not finish the story. I got very, very close, to my understanding, right at the end. However, a game breaking bug forced me to use chapter select to restart the final level, and thanks to a seemingly random puzzle in this final level, I got irritated, got the platinum, and uninstalled it. So I can't say for certain how the story ends. However, I can tell you how much fun the platinum is, and that is....kinda.

Story - 6/10

Spoiler

It's hard to review the story because it's so nonsensical, and that's the point. The most I can gather is that you are a spy, and you are getting sent on missions by your chief. You also appear to be a robot. The story is all over the place, and not always in a bad way. This game seems dead set on going against the grain every chance it gets, and a lot of the jokes are genuinely funny. Unfortunately, the game has a tendency to lay it on a little too thick, and this often comes off as trying too hard. Many of the games jokes just feel like its giggling and going "I'm so random!" which feels more desperate than hilarious. Fortunately, thanks to the short runtime, it never gets too old to be eye roll inducing, and sits comfortably at heh inducing when it reaches these moments.

Controls and Gameplay - 5/10

Spoiler

There's nothing blatantly wrong with the controls here, there's just nothing particularly amazing about them either. They serve their purpose, and since this game is a point and click adventure, at it's core, it does mostly work. You do need to be practically on top of items to get the prompt to interact with them. There are some fun side quest type events you can take place in, and some minigames that are....ok? One, which is a clone of a certain feline assault simulator, is pretty funny, and there's a pizza hut influenced one that's also moderately funny. Unfortunately, the game is often too busy trying to crack another joke to do anything particularly fun with it's ideas. For the most part, it spells out what you need to do, and aside the aforementioned late game "puzzle", nothing felt difficult to deduce beyond a few moments of messing around in the environment.

Audio and Video - 5/10

Spoiler

The graphics here are, surprisingly, perfect. This game makes little to no sense, and by embracing that, it does give itself something of an edge over other titles. The graphics, which look like each character is cut with a cookie cutter, and while the environments are occassionally sloppy looking, the whole game feels like a carefully constructed exercise in apathy. Fuck your standards, cause Jazzpunk don't care.

The audio is a different story. The music is pretty good, and the osund effects are actually pretty expertly crafted. The problem is the voice overs. Not all of them, but many of them are so distorted and muffled (on purpose, so credit there I guess) that it's extremely difficult to understand them. There's on screen text to summarize what they are saying, but unfortunately, it is again just a summary, meaning you still may have a hard time really grasping it. Also, this game foregoes subtitles in the options menu, meaning you have to really be listening to hear what these characters say.

Trophies - 8/10

Spoiler

The game really shines here. As you have likely read, you can complete the entire game without unlocking any trophies (one late game trophy seems debatable as to whether it's missable or not but again, not having hit the credits, I could be wrong). The trophies though are genuinely funny, easy to gain and best of all, get you playing with the game in a new way. I got the first half or so without any guide, and it was pretty funny to mess around and see what is tied to a trophy and what isn't. Some of the things that are are absurd, and I loved it.

Score - 6/10
I would personally wait for a sale (I did and I'm glad), but it's fairly funny game that is a easy platinum and is fairly enjoyable without. However, it's greatest strengths are also it's greatest downfalls all too often, and it does feel amatuerish and desperate at times. Fortunately, the overall package is still pretty good.

willythom88 · February 14, 2020

Never Alone: Foxtales DLC - A brief and moderately enjoyable adventure down the river - PS4
Having beaten and 100% the main game a few years ago, I do not remember it well enough to write too much on it. I remember finding it very frustrating, but that was in 2017, so as I was younger, it was probably a me thing. However, the Foxtales DLC is something I recently completed, and here are my thoughts.

Story - 7/10

Spoiler

The story here is presented as something of a legend. The use of the Iñupiaq language is a very nice touch to make the story feel more like we're sitting with someone who knows the story first hand, instead of the way some stories feel more like you're playing telephone. The moment to moment chaos our heroine and her fox find themselves in are genuinely enthralling, and the climax is actually fairly intense, from a plot perspective at least. The only thing that really holds it back is that the game is short, and the story is spread fairly thin throughout it. The second chapter feels pointlessly stitched in to make the story feel longer, even though there's nothing off importance in that chapter.

Gameplay - 5/10

Spoiler

So to be completely honest, I don't care for puzzle platformers. I find them to be largely very similar to one another, so once you've seen one, you've seen them all (with obvious changes to central gimmicks aside). The biggest issue with Foxtales is that it never makes very good use of it's central gimmick (side one puzzle I will discuss in a moment that I absolutely hated). The main gimmick here is water spirits, who blow water streams that you need to move to get past them, or in some cases, enemies. Your player character is defenseless, so you need to use these jet streams to clear aggressive barnacles and other enemies. There are also spirits above the water who give you rocks that you have to use to break barriers, which either allow you to progress, or open up new jet streams.

The problem is there's almost no variety to the puzzles other than adding some tricky rock placements. My favorite puzzle was in chapter two, and it was the only time where I really had to think about what to do next. For the most part, puzzles were easily solved by just messing around for a minute or two and trying different stream combinations. IT's not really the worst thing because again the game is short, but it was slightly disappointing.

There's the additional facet of controlling both the young girl and her fox. This is largely okay, but some puzzles require you to control them both very quickly, and it can be irritating. Especially when one character is in the water, and their ability to turn on a dime is almost non-existent. Additionally, the AI for the other character you aren't controlling has a tendency to cause unnecessary deaths by just meandering off, and they also don't always follow particularly well. In chapter two, I had to swim to a location, and because the fox chose not to follow me, I had to take control of it and swim it down as well. Which leads me to the final chapter, which has arguably the most annoying puzzle in the game. This part is extremely spoilerly in terms of the way the puzzle works, but I'll try my best not to include too much!!

The final chapter adds something of a constant threat, which requires you to try and rework how you navigate th level. Towards the end of this section, you have to unblock a jet stream with this threat making it more difficult to aim your rock throws. So, you have to use the fox to make the threat move with a jet stream, but then move the jet stream to avoid blowing the rock away. This puzzle is obnoxious, and the only reason I solved it (despite knowing what to do, but botching the timing every time) was because the rock spirit appeared over my boat and handed me the rock so I could try quicker, only to realize it would drop the rock if I didn't put my boat under it all the way, giving me a bit more time to have the fox move the spirit. The real issue here is the boat, which controls terribly. There is no inching forward or back with the boat, meaning you have to use the already iffy controls to kind of inch to the proper position. This was the only time in the game that positioning the boat was this important, and it was dreadful.

Trophies - 6/10

Spoiler

The trophies here are inoffensive but nothing particularly special. Beat the game, find the collectibles. I did enjoy locating the collectibles and reaching them, though two of them are story related. Just remember, you have to collect them, then view them, or the trophy won't pop.

Score - 6/10

The game is fine, and being only a little over an hour long, not a bad piece of DLC overall. The gameplay isn't particularly great, but it only manages to get obnoxious right at the end, and it's worth struggling through to complete the story.

Edited April 22, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · March 8, 2020

Inside - A brilliant puzzle platformer rarely let down - PS4

While the puzzle platformer was more or less re-invented by 2010's Limbo, the clones have been extremely plentiful. Black the Fall, Feist, Toby and the Secret Mine. All derivative, all far less interesting then the originator of tight, terrifying puzzle platforming. Fortunately, the studio behind Limbo came out and brought us Inside, which is far better than their original title, and miles ahead of the competition.

Story - 9/10

Spoiler

To call Inside's story conventional would be grossly incorrect. You play a young boy running to the right (and even to the left sometimes) and that's about all you need to know. The game is purposely vague, and while it initially feels like the tale of a dystopian society, the story frequently bobs and weaves it's way around all sort of terrifying sights that don't quite fit the mold of things like 1984 or even the aforementioned Black the Fall. It's important to know as little as possible going in, but to sum it up, the boy goes from nightmarish landscape to nightmare landscape, each more surreal than the last. Better yet, the story is brief, nd it's to the game's merit. Had it run much longer, it would likely have over stayed it's welcome, which is fortunately not the case here. The only story beat that hurts the game, and fortunately it's very minor, is tied to the games trophies. IF you unlock all of the trophies, you unlock a secret ending, which, for lack of a better word, is stupid. It's not the end of the world, but it is a bit of a let down as far as "rewards" go.

Puzzles - 8/10

Spoiler

The thing about Inside's puzzles that makes them so very good isn't how their designed, but how they're implemented. The puzzles are fairly diverse, but they feel like natural moments in the adventure. Where a lot of games have puzzles that feel like you're stopping to complete a puzzle to move on, Inside's puzzles feel like the natural progression of a moment. Ok, that explanation sucks. Let's try this.

Imagine you're playing a game, and in order to get through a door, you have to organize books in a certain order on a shelf. This feels like you're stopping to perform an action before you can continue. Inside's puzzles feel more akin to throwing the books on a shelf in a certain order while running forward (that puzzle would be awful, but you get the idea). Instead of stopping the player to force them to perform a puzzle, the very act of moving forward is the puzzle. It's nice because this is what puzzle platforming is supposed to be. The very act of platforming is the puzzle, and Inside is beyond exceptional at doing this.

The one issue I had was that some puzzles felt fairly arbitrary. None where difficult, but it did occasionally feel like the puzzle elements weren't building on each other, and some solutions felt isolated to just that puzzle. This reduced the learning process a little bit because these solutions rarely felt like earned moments of experience coming into play and more like weird little twists that are never revisited. Fortunately, they are few and far between.

Controls - 10/10

Spoiler

My word this game feels good to play. While the boy feels heavier than most platforming heroes, this is part of the games....charm? I guess. Anyway, The way he feels natural in every jump, every chase sequence, and during the puzzles, is fantastic. Games often botch physics, and fortunately, Inside nails them. A particularly gripping romp towards the end feels as intense as it looks, and even during water segments I initially hated, I felt that they grew on me and by the end, I genuinely loved them. Platformers live and die by their controls, and Inside lives proudly by how tight and fantastic it's simple controls (you can run, jump and interact with things) are. Not only are they responsive, and the very act of interacting with things is varied by those things behavior, but they add so much to the tension the game is going for.

Trophies - 10/10

Spoiler

This game's trophies are all tied to in game collectibles, and this kind of trophy list is fantastic. The collectibles are mostly well hidden aside from a few, and depending on how much you explore, you're likely to pop them in a different order than other players will. One thing to note, the last collectible is only accessible once you have the other 13, but thanks to the games liberal checkpoint symptom, that allows you to load to every checkpoint and pin down very precise moments so backtracking is painless. I wish this had had a platinum, but for a standard 100%, this is a great option when it comes to a trophy list.

Score - 9/10

Inside is so good, so precise and so tense that I honestly can't recommend it enough. The puzzles are smart but never so daunting they seem impossible. The story is brilliant and vague without being pretentious or confusing (at least in a bad way). It's a truly one of a kind game, and definitely worth full price if you find you have a few hours to kill.

Edited April 22, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · April 22, 2020

The Last Day of June - A beautiful story run down by muck - PS4
The Last Day of June is beautiful in the most superficial ways. Developed by the studio behind the underwhelming Murasaki Baby, The LAst Day of June is a glorified point and click adventure that fails to invoke the beauty it story so desperately wants to.

Story - 5/10

Spoiler

You play as Carl, a man who is wheelchair bound since a terrible accident took not only his ability to walk, but the love of his life, June. One night, something mysterious gives Carl the ability to go back to that fateful day, and taking control of 4 other people who were there, try to change everything so June doesn't die. It should work, but it fails pretty much every step of the way.

The problem is, as you take control of various other characters, like a young boy or Carl's best friend, you soon realize that you have to play each person's story multiple times to make any difference. This leads to a lot of repetition, meaning you will witness June's demise so many times, it will lose it's impact. Honestly, if they had trimmed it just a little, the story would have held up much better. However, repeating tasks over and over until you actually make an impact on the timeline, means you'll see many story beats, repeatedly, until they lose all impact. The best parts are when Carl is in his chair, alone in his home. Between his solo scenes, and the various dioramas you visit to get some insight into Carl and June's life, these small moments do a much better job of conveying the story then repeating story beats over and over until you piece together the right decisions to change moments. This leads us too...

Gameplay - 5/10

Spoiler

The gameplay in Last Day of June is very simple. Walk around, interact with things, until you find something you can use to impact other parts of the environment. The issue lies in the way the player pieces those things together. It's a lot of try this, then try that. The experiment is just boring after awhile, and while it holds up fairly well at first, it eventually fails to connect, and it's hard to keep it interesting, despite the games short length.

Graphics and Sound - 7/10

Spoiler

Another thing that might help the whole experience overall is if everything weren't so creepy to look at. The watercolor style of the environment is really pretty, but the lifeless nature of the people and animals (including missing eyeballs) is off putting. Bizarrely, though, it ends up working, as the characters are animated so well (and despite no dialogue, voice acted with noises so well), that they are believable, and they do a good job carrying the story forward. It means that even with the art style feeling a little out of place, it ultimately works, and the games endearing to look at overall.

Trophies - 4/10

Spoiler

The trophies are, also, not a particular high point. Since you will be jumping around between characters a good bit, influencing each characters environment, you will be tasked with collecting a lot of missables. Having each characters collectible Memories add up to a bronze trophy, it's hard to imagine they couldn't have all been combined for one silver. There are also several missable trophies tied to certain actions. These are a bit random it seems, and it means you could easily miss something if you aren't following a guide. Fortunately, there are some good guides online that will make this much more manageable.

Score - 5/10

The Last Day of June could have been much more impactful than it ends up being. However, constantly retracing your own steps results in a game that's extremely repetitive. Even with nice graphics, there's still the numbing gameplay and a subpar trophy list that expects you to experiment in just the right ways, while also feeding you trophies for collectibles you will most likely miss and some story beats. And with an ending this good, it should have felt a lot heavier than it ultimately does.

willythom88 · April 22, 2020

One Upon Light - An enticing and infuriating puzzle game - PS4

With a unique presentation, interesting gameplay mechanic, and cryptic story, One Upon Light should work. Ultimately, it does enough to be recommended, but not enough to be praised.

Story will not be factored into the score as I did not really get the point of it, and I feel I wasn't paying enough attention to the bottom of the screen, where the dialogue crawls, and is easily missed. However, the story seems to be purposefully artsy, and the last trophy cutscene really drove that point home.

Gameplay and Controls - 5/10

Spoiler

One Upon Light has you playing a scientists who is desperately trying to get back to his lab. However, for reasons he doesn't understand, he dies if he steps into the light. This means you will be tasked with navigating levels and finding ways to stay out of the light. This is implemented brilliantly, most of the time. Interesting level design means you will be tasked with finding new ways to get into the shadows (or create some of your own) in almost every level. Puzzles introduce new mechanics, like doors that only appear in shadows, and a device called the Echo that lets you lock shadows into place. The latter becomes extremely important, as you can navigate environments by pushing things into the way of light, freeze the shadow it makes, and then continue to use the thing you used to make the shadow in the first place for other elements of the puzzle (holding down buttons, making new shadows, etc.). By the way, "think" equals filing cabinet. Sorry about that.

The main issue is the controls. Moving the scientist is obnoxiously cumbersome, and he will frequently get stuck on pieces of the environment, making your timing falter. This is upsetting in sections where you have to move precisely, whether it's to follow behind a moving shadow, or during the games final level, which is timing heavy. Furthermore, sometimes the scientist gets stuck on the environment, and won't move, unless you mash X constantly to un-stick him. Even worse, the game sometimes doesn't respond to your actions appropriately. Doors occasionally don't respond when you try to open them. During a later level, you have to push a filing cabinet in place so when you step on a switch, it will cut off a new light source, so you can make a shadow and lock it in place. Unfortunately, during my first run, when hitting R1 to bring the option up, the filing cabinet wouldn't recognize what I was doing, resulting in me needing to restart the level.

Also, levels are designed in such a way you may find yourself permanently stuck, and forced to restart. This is because puzzles aren't designed to accommodate trying to go back on mistakes. One puzzle saved it's current state with two of my boxes in specific locations, but it turned out I needed one of them to proceed. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the box I needed back without dying, meaning I had to restart the long level over again. The level that, mind you, I was about at the end of.

Dying, by the way, is entirely too easy. Sometimes you can step into a light, and while it slows your character down to a crawl, they can escape into the shadow again before dying. Other times, they can't, and the amount of time seems somewhat arbitrary. The added bonus of the death fade out, which reminds me a bit of a scene change in a low budget made for TV movie, means you'll feel that little extra sting. Checkpoints are usually pretty good, but sometimes they require large, difficult portions of a puzzle in order to progress further to where you failed.

Graphics - 3/10

Spoiler

This game just looks so damn dull. The black and white style would work under any other circumstance, but here it just looks boring and lifeless. It makes it easy to distinguish shadow from light, but that doesn't make every hallway and industrial environment look any less...the same. It's very underwhelming and unimpressive, and while the actual art style of the scientist is moderately interesting, it's let down by literally everything else. It could have easily worked with color, or if the environments had more variety, but as it stands, it's definitely the worst part of the game.

Level 20 - 6/10(Spoiler Heavy!)

Spoiler

Normally I wouldn't point out something like this as it's own category, but this is a special exception. Level 20, the final level of the game, is both the best and worst level of the bunch. It's a long corridor that has you racing to the other end, chased by the collapsing ceiling letting in a flood of light. The reason this is the best level is because it's challenging, without being overly cheap. It has it's moments, but it's thrilling having to solve puzzles quickly and under the pressure of the level, as a whole, trying to kill you. Yes, it does feel cheap, occasionally, but it's one of the most exciting segments of a puzzle game I have played in years. The good/bad is, it's so different from the rest of the game, it's very much it's own experience. Honestly, it felt like I was relearning the game. Even in earlier timed segments, I had a safe place to stand, observe, and think. Not Level 20, which demands quick thinking, and will be an immediate turn off for some who prefer the slow and steady approach (no judgment!). The bad is that the level is fairly long, last 4 or 5 minutes, and there's no checkpoints. It has to be completed in one go, and failure, even at the very end (as I learned the hard way) results in starting the entire thing over. Again, it changes the gameplay entirely, but in this case, in a very annoying way.

Trophies - 5/10

Spoiler

A boring list, but an effective one. Everything is story related, with the exception of one of the Golds, which requires some last minute puzzle solving and a lot of back tracking. It acts as a sort of special ending, and it's pretty clever and nicely hidden in Level 20. It's a pretty plain list beyond that, but it works overall.

Score - 5/10

One Upon Light is a fairly easy 100% (the game is difficult, but the trophies are all story related, and the one that isn't just requires a bit of quick thinking and patience). The issue is that the game, while intriguing, is held back by a lack of polish and a feeling of sloppiness overall. It will run you about 4-6 hours to 100%, and most of that time will be filled with AHA! moments and infuriating puzzles designed to be hard, but particularly fun. Thank heavens the controls work! Oh....yeah....my bad....

Edited April 22, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · May 4, 2020

Letter Quest Remastered - Good to pass the time, but a tedious grind - PS Vita
I love word puzzles, and I am also fairly bad at them. Still, when I see a crossword puzzle or an interactive scrabble-like, I get really excited I also thoroughly enjoy RPGs, and Letter Quest Remastered marries the ideas brilliantly. Unfortunately, it leans on one of RPGs most maligned tropes, grinding. The grind isn't absurd or anything, but it runs just a little longer than it should.

Gameplay and Controls - 8/10

Spoiler

Letter Quest has you running through levels, only to stop you for merchants, treasure chests, and enemies. Merchants have you buying mid-battle supplies with gems you pick up by killing enemies. Treasure chests are opened through a hangman style mini game, and generally contain lesser items to use in battle (one upgrade actually makes these somewhat better, but really, the items you get are pretty basic and forgettable). Enemies, on the other hand, are pretty enjoyable to fight. You put words together with the tiles you have available, and the more letters (and more original) the word is, the more points you will score against the opponent. Some enemies have special conditions (won't take damage from corner letters, takes triple damage for words that end in S, etc.) that makes the process of going through wave after wave a lot more varied.

Unfortunately, the merchants themselves sell items that only help in minor ways, and you'll need to spend a lot of your gems at the store between levels. There are a lot of upgrades available, and you can pick up potions and stat boosting books. It's a decent distillation of the standard skill tree, and I enjoyed going through and building up enough savings to purchase upgrades for weapons and my own character. The books and special upgrades are mostly complimentary, but if they were removed, I probably wouldn't be too upset (aside from one that shows how much damage a word will deal, that one is great).

Gem counts are a bit high for some upgrades, but fortunately the difficulty curve is such you will rarely (but you will!) get stuck. Even when you do get stuck, each level has three additional tiers you can take a crack at. One of them is always timed, while the other two put special conditions on the enemies (making them elite versions or making certain word tiles not work, for instance). It means that even going through old levels several times remains interesting, even 10 hours in.

The touch screen interface works well enough but occasionally I found myself tapping one letter and a different tile getting added. This is mainly a pain in the ass on time limit runs, but otherwise it's more of a mild annoyance. In general, the game controls well, and everything is spelled out for you to easily understand. Teehee.

Graphics - 6/10

Spoiler

The purposefully cartoony graphics are nice, but limiting. Especially in the enemy department. While the backgrounds look different enough, there's nothing spectacular about them. Additionally, there's only a few enemy variations throughout, with later levels just piling on different skins to the same enemies. It's not the worst thing in the world, but the enemies don't feel special because there's so few versions of each one.

Trophies - 4/10

Spoiler

This is about as humdrum of a trophy list as one can expect to find. Every trophy is just "Do this X amount of times" and it's obnoxious. This is where the grinding will likely come in for most. Now, if you're like me, and bad at this game, you will likely clear the 3000 words trophy before finishing the Crystal (Elite) levels. However, if you are good at the game, expect to have to grind out 1,000 words or more in the most pointless display of tenacity this title has to offer. It's a shame because the game has some in-game achievements as well, and these seem to follow the same formula. A real missed opportunity for some clever implementation of a system that is mandatory for thew developer. If you have to do it, why not make it fun? Or at least challenging beyond doing things over and over again until the trophy pops.

Score - 6/10
If it weren't for the ridiculously tedious nature of the trophies, this would be an easy recommendation for trophy hunters. Don't get me wrong, there's far worse grinds out there, but it's a matter of context. Completing the main campaign only takes a couple hours, and the rest of an easily 10 hour 100% is repetition that while somewhat enjoyable, is ultimately obnoxious. For non-trophy hunters, this is a good distraction, but if you care about achievements, I'd let this one slide.

willythom88 · May 10, 2020

Marvel's Spider-man - Almost Amazing Spider-man - PS4

Insomniac's take on Spider-man is, like many modern open world brawlers, heavily inspired by Rocksteady's Arkham games. However, this isn't limited to the combat alone. Fortunately, the title overall rises above it's obvious inspiration, and deserves all the praise it's ever gotten.

Story - 7/10

Spoiler

Peter Parker has been Spiderman for awhile now, and the game opens with him taking down Fisk. The interesting thing about Spiderman is how his villains are extremely...extra...yet don't get the kind of coverage Batman's do. This is a shame because the web-slingers foes are pretty great in their own right, and Insomniac has done a great job realizing them (and coming up with some new ones (or one) of their own. But this isn't just about Spidey's fight to save NYC from a new terrorist threat, and thank heavens. The bad guys, at least the main ones for most of his adventure, are the Demons, and they are fairly bland. From a gameplay perspective, they are pretty interesting. From a story perspective, they are crazy forgettable, and definitely the least interesting part of the game, despite some seriously evil thing they do creating some of the games best moments. Sure they are evil, but they aren't as interesting as some of the things they do.

Spidey has some friends here, and you'll even get to play as some of them. These moments are exclusively stealth based, and it results in some tense moments that feel interesting, and could only be achieved by taking you out of the superheros shoes. Yes, they are slower, for the most part, and this can feel cumbersome when the action slows down for these isolated moments. However, as part of a greater whole, they are irreplaceable, and do a great job fleshing out other characters besides Peter.

Speaking of those characters and Peter, the personal moments for Peter are handled beautifully. Even the moments where Peter is just talking to Mary Jane or Aunt May are brilliant, and make you genuinely care about not only about Peter, but about Spiderman, his safety, and the safety of all of the people around New York. This world is so expertly built, I found myself almost tearing up at one point, something games simply don't make me do very often.

For complaints, honestly the story, despite being well crafted for the most part, has some pacing issues. Most of Act 1 and 2 are spent dealing with the Demons, and while they do occasionally blow your mind, they are also a poor stand in for some of Peter's more formidable foes, who simply don't get enough screen time. Additionally, a late game twist feels fairly unearned. It's briefly hinted at (and presumably more hinted at through audio logs, but I simply didn't go out of my way to listen to the few of those found in the game), but then seems fairly random, like they ran out of time, and needed to get this in there, while neglecting the build up.

Combat and Controls - 6/10

Spoiler

It's Arkham, with webs. Okay, that's an over simplification. Spider-man does a great job taking the brawler foundation, with the locking in and sweeping to enemies, and finds some really brilliant ways to make combat feel fluid and original. As you unlock new abilities, it's fascinating how original they are. At one point, I could throw an enemy into the air, pull myself to them, hit them, throw them at another enemy, and then, while still in air, rip the gun from an enemies hands and throw it at another enemy. This was all so easy to chain together and felt incredibly natural.

Stealth is also extremely good, but underutilized. A lot of areas don't work great for sneaking up on enemies, but when you tackle an enemy base, or get a nice setup thanks to a friendly cutscene, you will get the chance for stealth. It's so good, and the ability to take out an entire scenarios full of enemies with creative take-downs is so satisfying. You also get quite a bit of time with the other characters to be stealthy, but due to their limited move set, it can feel like all the best parts of stealth got removed.

The controls, otherwise, are mostly fine. Holding down R2 to swing felt effortless, and after awhile, web-swinging became very easy to do without thinking about it. Sometimes, it felt difficult to get Spiderman to do what I wanted him to do (especially precise movement on the sides of buildings, which is important), and it got frustrating. Also, some enemies (cough JETPACKcough) were obnoxious to deal with when there was a lot of enemies around them, because precise tactics can be hard to implement when there's a lot of items on screen you can interact with. A good example is that some later outposts will often have multiple enemies, and a specific power up uses the triangle. However, that also pulls you to enemies, and it's too easy to lose the power ups ability because you jumped to the wrong enemy.

One thing that is important to point out is that while combat is fun, enemies aren't especially varied. This game really stands out with it boss fights, but these are unfortunately few and far between. Most of the time you will be going up against minor goons, and while these enemies are fairly inventive at first (this is where the Demons shine after all) they do trail off as you get closer to the platinum and you'll dread them more as time goes on. Simply adding guns to some enemies only asks as a way to try out your new unlocked abilities, and unfortunately, after awhile, it's not as fun to watch.

Side-Quests - 7/10

Spoiler

What's an open world game with a leveling system without a ton of side quests, and Spider-man delivers (too much quite frankly). There are a lot of bases, of various types, to take down, and these are the highlight. Yes, they get repetitive, especially over 20 hours in, but stealthing into a base, and then tackling waves of enemies is surprisingly fun. As the bases take different shapes, they do get tricky, and this just adds to some of the games best side moments, as you crack the best way to use the environment, and your skills, to take down a lot of enemies.

Next up, Taskmaster challenges are fun, but only a few of them. Think the predator and combat challenges in the Arkham games, but there's also drone challenges (basically testing your ability to swing and traverse quickly) and bomb challenges (find multiple bombs and destroy them quickly) The bomb challenges are pretty good, and the stealth are simply fantastic. The combat challenges are fine and the drone challenges are..challenging, but not in a fun way. You do get a lot of tokens (a special currency for upgrading gadgets or unlocking suits) for doing these though, and a fairly underwhelming boss battle at the end.

From here, we have collectibles, and these would be pretty hard to find, if you couldn't just add them all to your map, and then make them waypoints. It helps a lot if you're like me and want to do everything on the side before progressing the story, but if you'd rather find things on your own, avoid unlocking things on the map (done by unlocking all towers. These also offer some fun, and varied, excursions, that really show the team's willingness to throw every good idea they had at this game. It does mean that the collectibles even feel unique, and even though we all know collectibles, Insomniac found very interesting ways to keep them exciting.

The only duds are the random crimes (or the crimes you have to hit R3 to locate while swinging around). These are actually pretty interesting, ranging from taking over small outposts, car chases and even some bombs. The problem is there are too many of them. Way too many honestly, and while each district has a small laundry list of small crimes to locate and stop, when you couple all the districts together, it gets repetitive towards the end, and becomes more of a chore to complete them than anything else.

Oh, and also, when you can, complete the corrupted student side quest. They aren't terribly creative, but they are one of the better side quests in the quests.

Graphics - 7/10

Spoiler

Ok, so from an environmental standpoint, this game is gorgeous. NYC is astounding, vast, and truly jaw dropping to look at. Details in the store fronts and parks are brilliantly realized. Hell, even Spiderman's outfits (that all get expertly represented in cutscenes) are lovingly detailed detailed. The cutscenes, speaking of, look amazing, and Insomniac did an amazing job painting this world into reality. However, NPC faces are occasionally extremely ugly (almost late PS2 bad), and there are issues with enemies occasionally getting stuck in the environment On one instance, an enemy spawned inside a shipping container, and in order to complete the mission, I had to repeatedly slam into the container until he died. More of a programming issue, but it's so rare we'll stick it here. For the most part, this wasn't a problem, but every so often, the immersion was broken.

Trophies - 8/10

Spoiler

This is an example of a great starter platinum. Nothing is too difficult, and while it can get a bit tedious to clean up each district, it never gets so bad that you'll be cursing or throwing a controller. In fact, most trophies will happen naturally.

The only stand out issues are some of the grades seem off, and the pacing of the story trophies is way off (but again, more of a story issue than a trophy one). For instance, finding and completing all Research Stations is much more difficult than collecting all the backpacks. However, the Stations earn you a bronze, while the backpacks grab you a silver. It seems like an easy reverse, but whatever. Additionally, expect to go a decent amount of time without a story related trophy, as these are mostly tied to finishing acts and completing boss fights, events that are rather oddly spaced.

However, for people who are getting into trophy hunting, this list is very accessible and easy to manage. The only "missable", involving unlocking all suits, isn't missable, just easy to mess up and force you to grind (I'm clearly a victim of not planning ahead). Don't consider this a strike against the game (again, it's not missable, just easy to make harder on yourself), as it's actually very well conceived trophy list, and if you don't feel like digging through the challenges, and you have the DLC, you can find more tokens there (or in New Game +, even. I haven't started the DLC yet so I'm not ready to vouch for it like that).

Score - 7/10
Don't go into this thinking of it as being like Batman. This stands on it's own just fine. It's a very good open world title, that will make you feel like your the web-slinging superhero. It's a little derivative of the game it will probably be most compared to (even containing a few scenes that feel like they could easily have fit in Asylum and Knight, because they felt like total copies), but that doesn't make the experience feel any less than a great title that manages to feel like the power fantasy you're looking for.

willythom88 · May 18, 2020

Marvel's Spider-man: The City That Never Sleeps - Without trophies, this would be pretty ok - PS4

The meat of Spider-man is a pretty great open world adventure game, so the three part DLC, The City That Never Sleeps, didn't have to do much but give us more story, more combat, and more exploration. Well, it gave us some very ok story, more of the same combat (they did it!), and some significantly weaker exploration. In short, this is the DLC everyone wanted, but no one needed.

Story and Gameplay - 4/10

Spoiler

Taking place across three seperate DLC stories, and several months after the main game, The City That Never Sleeps re-introduces Peter to an old flame, Black Cat (COUGHcatwomanCOUGH), and a gang war that brings in notorious gangster, Hammerhead. He is an interesting foe for Spidey for sure, as he is, initially at least, a well grounded enemy. As time goes on, however, the plot gets more absurd (in a good way), and the plot points get pushed more to the wayside (in a...bad....way?).

TCTNS is far more of a comic book game than the main title was. Yes, it was obviously a comic book game, but it also felt like it was rooted in reality. TCTNS feels much more along the lines of the power fantasy the main title almost was, but it does show why the main game was smart for completely avoiding this. Characters rarely matter beyond a few plot points, and then are quickly forgotten. One plotline gets almost completely abandoned, starting as a main plot in chapter 2, then getting relegated to a side quest in chapter 3. Worse yet, it's still a sloppy mop up if you do venture out to learn about it.

The worst part of all of this is that the future plot implications are heavy, but because of how they are handled, I couldn't care less. The minutiae of say, Peter and MJ's relationship, feel just like that. Insignificant and pointless, despite having real consequences should Insomniac create a follow up title. If they were going to set up future developments, they could have done a better job making them feel heavy.

Additionally, as time goes on, Hammerhead goes from imposing Maggia mob boss to a villain who's rather...silly. His character design later in the game is ridiculous, and he's never scary. Additionally, his boss fights are painfully easy (perhaps on other difficulties they step up the challenge, but it's hard to not think he's still a joke, relatively speaking). Most enemy encounters are also trivial, and only really saved by some interesting new enemy types (I, for one, liked the galling gun enemies, though the guys with shields can get bent....in a good way). Unfortunately, most enemy encounters are just enemy waves of foes who are bullet sponges (well.....toe and knuckle sponges I guess), and I can't say I really remember much about them.

With that being said, they did try to mix things up a bit from time to time, but this is a mixed bag of results. During the first mission of chapter one, you have to prevent enemies from escaping a certain area, and this is a horrendous end to the first mission. Some of the later missions are better, but for the most part, the experiments have not helped the game much.

Side Quests - 5/10

Spoiler

TCTNS doesn't handle side quests much more gracefully, but it does manage to excel over the main game just so. The introduction of Screwball challenges (basically the Taskmaster chal;lenges, but with the addition of the Photobomb prompts, which make getting a higher score much easier) is a great touch. These are really enjoyable, and even the hardest of them can be overcome with ease after a couple of attempts. Best of all, the photobombs (as annoying as they are at first) are actually a pretty good way to force you to think quickly (or plan ahead well).

There are also hidden collectibles, but like in the main game, they are all pretty easy to find with the map showing them off and letting you set them as waypoints. In fact, the audio tapes in chapter 3 are somewhat challenging to locate even with the map, and it's a nice change of pace. Sadly, the other side missions suck.

First, there are bases. These are pretty managable, and with the whole dlc only having 7 to take down, they are pretty easy to manage. The problem is they are boring. Wave after wave of goon has likely lost it's luster by now, and they add almost nothing new, aside from weird platform distribution, to make anything feel different. Then, there's the random crimes, of which there are 70, and these are mind numbing. They do introduce some new types of crimes, but they aren't compelling enough to make the ridiculous number of them any more palatable.

Trophies - 4/10

Spoiler

The trophies should be fine, but sadly, they are just the summation of everything else. Completing everything means bashing your head against the mostly dull side quests, and getting to the end of each mediocre story. The main games somewhat creative trophies are gone, and replaced by your standard just do everything trophies that highlights the DLC's shortcomings. A disappointing list across all three chapters.

Score - 4/10

The City That Never Sleeps doesn't even come close to the main titles good points, and only really emphasizes the main game's weaknesses. A painfully boring way to end the main game, it's really a just so so package barely keeping it's head above water.

Edited May 18, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · June 7, 2020

Bulb Boy - A grotesque adventure into one light bulbs personal hell - PS4
Bulb Boy is gross. Intentionally so, but that doesn't change the fact that it's gross and disturbing visuals will be the first thing any player notices. Unfortunately, outside of that, it's not much to talk about.

Story - 5/10

Spoiler

Bulb Boy is a young boy with a light bulb for a head. Living with his grandpa and dog, an evil force takes over his home and he must destroy them. Honestly, the issue here is the game is kind of abstract. Plot points are more meant to be disturbing than to make any real sense. With that being said, they are successful at being gross and disturbing, but it never feels like the plot is anything close to coherent.

Graphics - 8/10

Spoiler

As I have already said, this game is disgusting. However, the art style is remarkably effective. While the screen you get when launching the game is much more detailed, the art work fitsd the theme very well. Unfortunately, environments feel a bit repetitive, and while this would make sense since the whole game is in Bulb Boy's house, you get just enough time out of the house proper in the second....chapter, I guess....that it becomes apparent that the environments are particularly interesting when you are confined to the home.

Gameplay and Glitches - 5/10

Spoiler

This is a pretty traditional point and click adventure. The controls are easy enough to grasp, and while the puzzles can be a bit random feeling in their solutions, the general feel is the game is pretty well put together. The inclusion of boss style encounters is nice, and the horrifying monsters you will square off with are pretty terrifying. Unfortunately, the game is a bit messy from a technical stand point. The auto-save feels a bit random, and sometimes doesn't trigger correctly. This causes several of the boss related trophies to not unlock correctly, if at all. You may need to go through a boss fight 3 or 4 times before the trophy will unlock. Otherwise, the game isn't too buggy (one early instance of Bulb Boy sliding around the screen instead of walking was really the only glitch I can think of)

Trophies - 5/10

Spoiler

The trophies (aside from not unlocking correctly) are fine, but that's about it. Do a thing a certain amount of times, die in every way possible, and finish the game. It's a servicable list, but nothing particularly interesting.

Score - 6/10

Bulb Boy is a decent point and click adventure that is unfortunately unpolished enough that it can be irritating. It's a decent 100% (and given it can be done in a couple hours, not a huge time sink either). Overall, it's a good title, just don't set your expectations too high.

willythom88 · June 21, 2020

Dust: An Elysian Tail - Excellent Action RPG with some weak sauce mixed in - PS4
During the early days of the indie revolution, there were certain developers who set themselves apart. Whether it was Super Meat Boy's absurd difficulty, Braids bizarre time mechanic, or Fez's crazy visuals (and how they played into their mechanics), everyone had an angle. You had to to survive against the AAA behemoths. Dust: An Elysian Tail, manages to stand out for two reasons. It's Disney-esque visuals, and the fact that it seems far too large for one man to have made it all. And yet, he did.

Story - 8/10

Spoiler

Dust wakes up in the Glades. He is soon joined by a talking sword and a flying fox type creature named fidget. Dust has amnesia, which sounds fairly rudimentary. What makes An Elysian Tail so unique is the bond between Dust and Fidget. The sword doesn't have anywhere near as much to say and these two do, and it makes the back and forth between them very important. Fortunately, it works out very well, as their banter is the most interesting (and prolific) in the story. Various NPCs dot the land also, and they are largely well realized. Some of them feel very flat at the end of the day, but the rest make up for them.

Additionally, it should be commended that Dust does something interesting with the whole amnesia hook (a tired cliche even when the game originally came out). While I never got too wrapped up in the story, the whole thing felt smart enough to justify kudos regardless.

Graphics - 6/10

Spoiler

Dust: An Elysian Tail is a game that, when it initially released, was very pretty. Hand drawn and stunningly well realized, the world Dustr and co. live in comes to life through the visuals. Sadly, it hasn't aged particularly well.

The issue is in the character animations. The various towns and environments are still very pretty, though occasionally they have a same old same old feel to them. Unfortunately, this makes it somewhat difficult to pick areas apart within the same map (in fact, many of the early areas look remarkably similar). However, character animations, especially during cut scenes, look somewhat amateurish, moving like stiff wooden dolls. This is ultimately okay considering the game looks very nice from a distance (if unremarkably repetitive is some areas), but upon closer inspection, it looks much cheaper than one might think.

Gameplay - 7/10

Spoiler

In a lot of ways, if you've played other Metroidvanias, you've played Dust. Areas are locked off until you unlock certain abilities, all areas are almost maze like maps with secrets hidden everywhere. The RPG elements though really shine, especially in their simplicity. Leveling Dust up is remarkably easy (perhaps even a little too easy, as even in the higher levels I could level up a few times crossing the later stage maps once), and assigning skill gems (of which you earn one a level) is very simple and intuitive.

Fidget is the most unique element in your arsenal. He has the ability to shoot projectiles (of which there are 3 types). If Dust swings his sword, it will create a Dust Storm, or a wide area attack that essentially throws Fidgets projectiles into a larger area. Even on Tough (the games second highest difficulty), it's very easy to clear enemies with a large electrical attack, or a personal favorite, columns of fire.

There a town of secrets hidden throughout the game, including 12 hidden characters from other indie titles to hunt down and unlock. A smart decision was used to give most of them a unique environment around them, themed after their original game. Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what the theme is, but fortunately this is really only an issue on a couple of the characters.

Side quests are largely fetch quests, and aren't particularly note worthy. Additionally, the reward for completing them is only money, which is nice considering how expensive items are, but perhaps a little EXP gain would have been nice. Still, buying things gets expensive very quickly (several thousand gold will only buy you a few healing items, though I haven't played on lower difficulties, so it may adjust on those).

There are also trials to undertake, and I can't stress enough how much I normally hate time trials (it's why I never platinummed Horizon Zero Dawn, a game I adore). However, these are just north of being difficult, and after a few tries on each (with the exception of Trial 4), I was able to clear them with little issue, and a lot of fun. Trial 4, on the other hand, can find a special bench in Hell and park it's ass there for eternity. Yes, there are harder challenges in gaming. No, that doesn't make it any less obnoxious.

The only other issue is the controls. The controls are largely fine and make sense. Unfortunately, the dodge is just a little to sensitive, resulting in accidentally tapping the RS and sending Dust flying in whatever direction (usually left) that you tapped it in. This is obnoxious, and since dodging is already on L2 and R2, ultimately feels unnecessary.

Trophies - 8/10

Spoiler

I really like this trophy list. First of all, I can respect any game that says "Play on either of the hardest difficulty levels" instead of demanding the highest difficulty having it's own trophy. Tough is just that, and required me putting a pretty good amount of effort into leveling Dust up. I also appreciate the decision to only require 20 of the 21 side quests be completed (that bench from earlier? The Red Moss quest can park it's ass there too). The only issue I really have is distribution of grades. Specifically, the 20 side quest should have been a silver, and killing 6 enemies with one bomb should not be a gold (this will happen a lot; it's over payment). Perhaps change the 6 enemies with one bomb to a bronze, the 20 side quests to a silver, and beating the final boss to a gold? Makes a bit more sense.

Score - 7/10
Dust: An Elysian Tail is great. Even at it's absolute weakest, it's still a very well aged game. Graphically it doesn't hold up like it oncew would, but it's still a great looking game if you stand far enough back.

willythom88 · June 24, 2020

Concrete Genie - A Pleasant Distraction - PS4
Concrete Genie is a pleasant title that borrows from the right places, and only manages to stumble when it forgets who it is.

Story - 8/10

Spoiler

Ash is a lonely boy, sitting on the pier, finishing some doodles. When a group of bullies comes along and the doodles are scattered to the wind, Ash has to set out to get them bacxk and ultimately learn why the bullies are how they are.

Concrete Genie's story is a nice. Ash is a likable kid, and while some of his dialogue is so thick with optimism it's almost cringe worthy, he's an easy character to get behind. When he meets his art come to life in the form of Genies, and a gifted brush that allows him to draw things onto the side of buildings for these Genies to interact with, the fantastic becomes reality. At least for him. It's not remarkably unique, sort of a mix of Okami and Max and the curse of Brotherhood. The central story though, of Ash and his attempt to save his town, and learn about those who are bullying him, is remarkably compelling.

Unfortunately, the final act is a bit bloated, and changes the dynamic of the game almost entirely, resulting in a tonal shift that isn't always welcome. It's not so different that the game feels completely out of place between the two halves, but it's just different enough it feels like the game was having a hard time making up it's mind. It's much more noticeable in the gameplay, but it makes the story feel a little uneven.

Graphics - 9/10

Spoiler

I really like how this game looks. Perhaps just a bit more polish would have sealed the deal for it being one of the most graphically unique titles I've seen in awhile. It's mostly the characters facial features that don't look refined. However, it doesn't ruin the fact that this sort of Coraline style art is really enjoyable. The best part, weirdly enough, is the extremely amatuer (on purpose) way that the Genie's look. The world also looks good, though not particularly like it fits the same artistic mold. This isn't a deal breaker though, as everything flows together nicely. It just feels like the world looks more like someone trying to draw a realistic looking place, while the characters don't. The juxtaposition is actually pretty refreshing though. There's also a nice contrast between the vibrant Genie's and the dull environment that really hits the aesthetic spot.

Gameplay and Controls - 7/10

Spoiler

Now, there's nothing overtly terrible about the gameplay, but the little things add up to create an experience that's more fun to see then to play. The problem comes down to the way you have to interact with the world. Drawing by moving the controller is imprecise, freed running and climbing are all pretty basic (though I wouldn't say this is an issue), and Genie's are all controlled by AI that's largely competent, but occasionally obnoxious. Trying to get the AI to come to where you are, or interact with a nearby mechanism, can be a bit tedious. Also, they have a tendency to dog pile on top of each other. This would be fine if the Genies didn't use visual prompts to show what they want you to draw. This results in being unable to see what you need top draw due to all the neon monsters making it impossible to see the aid.

There's also an odd juxtaposition between the gameplay during the first section, and the gameplay during the second. The first chapters have you being sneaky and lighting up lightbulbs, while the later chapters take a more direct and aggressive approach to problem solving. This is fine but neither feels like it gels well with the other, and both feel fairly plain. Stealth is only just, as it's extremely hard to get caught. Meanwhile, fighting is really easy and only adds stress due to the addition of a life bar.

However, the game does feature free climbing, which is very basic, but ultimately pretty enjoyable. There are a ton of collectibles to find, and climbing up on roof tops is a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed the skate ability you get later in the game, and it seems like with a little more consistency, this would have felt more fluid overall. The collectibles are mostly fun (repainting signs, finding newspapers), but the ones that require you to paint a Genie's memory are pretty inconsistent. Sometimes I had to draw everything they requested, other times I just had to draw one thing. The aforementioned Genie dog pile is crazy noticeable here.

Trophies - 7/10

Spoiler

The problem with the trophies really comes down to how much fun a lot of them are, and how predictably simple others are. There are pretty fun ones, like having your genie do certain things. Then there's just some plain old collectibles. It's just disappointing to see some of them be so interesting, and to see others be so humdrum. Side note, the Om-Nom-Nom and In The Zone trophies can get bent. They aren't hard, but the former requires some luck, while the latter seems to follow rules it doesn't make obvious. I don't know, maybe it was just me.

Score - 8/10
I really enjoyed my time with Concrete Genie, even if it didn't always feel like there was a clear vision beginning to end. The story is well realized and the unique visuals make up for the occasional snag in the gameplay and trophies.

Edited June 24, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · July 7, 2020

Shiny - An unpolished turd - PS4
There are certain things we as gamers understand to be universal. R2 is to accelerate a car. Headshots are the body shot of choice. And platformer heroes have a weight to them that dictates how good or bad their game ultimately is. Shiny fails to realize that (and pretty much every other staple of modern game design), and comes out like a mess wrapped so tightly in on itself that it's bordering on exploding. It's not the worst game ever made (or even on the PS4), but my god, it's still very, very bad.

Story - 4/10

Spoiler

The story isn't very obvious, but from what I can gather, you and many of your fellow robots have crash landed on a planet and you are trying to escape. The game doesn't do a particularly good job outlining the plot, and it's ultimately more confusing then it needs to be, given it's mostly ignored except at the beginning and the end. It's serviceable I guess, but nothing special (I almost didn't give it it's own category it's so irrelevant).

Graphics - 3/10

Spoiler

Look, I'm a huge defender of the idea that the 16 bit indie game era is over and it's time for indie games to embrace PsOne style graphics. With that being said, this game looks like trash. The cutscenes have a definite PsOne vibe, but they feel very messy (the final cutscene is graphically broken, with a huge black bar across the bottom of the screen when I finished it). Even when you're controlling the robot, everything is ugly and bland. At it's best, Shiny looks amateurish. At it's worst, it looks buggy and gross.

Controls and Gameplay - 2/10

Spoiler

This game feels very awkward to play, and commits the greatest platformer sin of all. The controls are floaty, meaning it's difficult to actual move the robot around. A platformer lives and dies by how well the character controls, and your little robot is terrible to control. This is made up a little for by a jetpack, but it only feels so good to control as well. The main issue is it constantly moves you upwards, meaning you have to pump the breaks (or let go of R2) to descend and control it well.

There are other power ups, but the only useful one (sort of) is an energy shield. It negates damage from incoming damage, but only rocks, which frankly aren't prevalent enough to make this a super useful power up. Then there's the temperature regulator, which is the worst of the bunch and god awful. The idea is anytime you step into fire (again, after a few levels with the regulator, this is basically a non-issue) you tap the L2 and R2 buttons rapidly to reduce your temperature. This is abysmal though, as the pattern to tap them on the screen doesn't really work, so you have to alternate tapping each one, and guess what? It takes forever, of standing there and tapping them over and over to come down to a normal temp.

The game has a time limit, resource management component that's also really poorly implemented, though at least the idea is good. Checkpoints grant you energy, as do collectible batteries, which you need to do most objectives and to wake up robots you find on your path. The issue is that it drains fairly inconsistently, and it also drains when you take damage. Something happened to the rocks between level 2 and level 18, because they (despite looking exactly the same) do about 3 times more damage. Fan blades kill you almost instantly, and the hardest part of levels is getting through them with enough health to still power an elevator (yep, it controls that too).

Trophies - 2/10

Spoiler

The issue with trophies here is two fold, but let's start with a positive. If they all worked, they would be a nice challenge (though nothing too extreme; 3/10 tops). Unfortunately, they don't all work, and aren't very creative or interesting to achieve. Collect all the robots. Collect all the batteries. And of course, a trophy for each level beaten. But again, they don't all work properly, so who cares?

Any trophy that counts to a specific number (die a certain amount, jump a certain amount) has the potential it seems to not unlock properly (though I fortunately was able to avoid that most of the time and trophies popped at the appropriate time. The only one I had issues getting to pop was "Glitch" and it just failed to pop once, though that may have been on me). However, 9 trophies, and therefore the platinum, do not pop under any circumstances, and to call it obnoxious is a bit of an under statement So a list that isn't particularly imaginative, and about 25% of the trophies don't even work? Nah, that's not good.

Score - 3/10

I'd recommend just not bothering. Trophies don't pop, the graphics suck, and the gameplay is extremely underwhelming. If you are interested, getting the 39 available trophies isn't very difficult, seeing as all the hardest trophies are broken. Oh well, guess it's not so shiny after all.

willythom88 · July 31, 2020

Yoku's Island Express - Frustrating in all the best ways - PS4
As someone who doesn't really care for Metroidvanias, but loves pinball, Yoku's Island Express was a compromise for sure. However, it turned out the exploration is what I loved, and the pinball, eh, not so much.

Story - 6/10

Spoiler

Yoku, a small red beetle, arrives on the island to become the new postmaster. However, this becomes an after thought as the tale of a god killer fills the island with dread. Yoku must then put things right before the islands God is destroyed, and the island along with it.

The plot is serviceable, but not particularly engaging. I never once cared about the islanders fate, and it wasn't because they weren't charming. They were actually, and I found them to be really likable. The problem is there is no sense of urgency. The entire game has this very weird zen like aura to it, which would be fine, but in the case of the story, it makes everything feel less urgent and more dismissable. Given you can collect almost every collectible in the game without finishing the story proper, it feels like this God Slayer is more a minor annoyance, like someone blaring their music on a quite street or someone complaining loudly about the service at the restaurant

Otherwise, again, the story is just serviceable. It works well enough, and you largely forget you're a mailman about 2 hours in, except when going for collectibles. It's a decent enough McGuffin though.

Gameplay - 5/10

Spoiler

The gameplay is split into two forms. You will navigate the island, being able to freely go wherever you want, aside some areas which require new power ups, as you might expect in a Metroidvania. However, you can't jump. Instead, you must find different colored paddles and use those to propel yourself around the island. Occasionally, you will stumble across a pinball machine like grid and have to use those paddles to escape it. This all sounds great. In practice, it's very rough around the edges.

Let's start with just navigating. Exploring the island is a lot of fun, and as previously mentioned, the occupants feel pretty interesting and charming. The world also feels lived in most of the time, though once you enter a series of caves or go up to a snowy peak, this doesn't feel quite as true. In fact, the best way to describe it would be the jungle setting is really well built and lived in. Navigating the world is mostly fun to do, as long as you don't need to use any power ups.

The power ups range from mildly annoying to down right bad. Things like the dive fish, which allows you to dive under water, don't control remarkably well, requiring you to rapidly press X to submerge. However, it's not that obnoxious, just irritating when you first start doing it. Then there are Slugs and the Sootling Leash. Slugs explode after a certain amount of time, and can be used to propel you around the map to otherwise unreachable places. This is...ok, mostly. I never quite felt like I got the hang of aiming my ball with these, and the way the game slows you down near slugs, even if you don't want to grab them, is kind of annoying. I get why they would do it, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating.

The real winner for worst power up though goes to the horrendous Sootling Leash, which acts as something of a grappling hook. Look, grappling hooks will always be kind of....weird to control. Either they send you in a straight line making to somewhat hard to navigate an environment, or they are hard to aim, making it even harder. The Sootling Leash introduces a new challenge...having absolutely no control over the direction what so ever. You instead spin in a circle, wild and free, and have to time letting go to end up where you want to be. I hate it, immensely, and it took till towards the end of my run to feel like I had any semblance of control over it.

The level design, however, is top notch. Navigating the island leads to exploring and discovering a lot of areas that feel fresh and impossibly organic. There are secrets dotted all over the map, and finding them means a lot of experimentation. The only draw back to the world design isn't even part of the design itself. It's the map, or specifically, the lack of labels on the map, so you can tell what each area is called. Some are easy to remember, but it's hard to follow a guide when they use place names and the map doesn't offer you the luxury.

Pinball, on the other hand, feels like a good idea, but is more often than not, very irritating. The problem comes down to the precision needed to complete your goal. You almost always want to flick the ball off the very end of the paddle, but that also leads to missing things. For instance, one of the games collectibles, the Scarab, are usually set on the board is awkward positions on purpose. Hitting these becomes much more taxing. Once you've punted the ball from the board entirely for the fifth time in a row, despite feeling like you timed the flick better, it can become more annoying then it's worth. Fortunately, you can't die, so that zen like calm returns to at least let you retry pretty quickly. just don't get too mad, or you'll start making stupid mistakes (ya know, like video games?).

There are multiple paint jobs you can put on your ball, and these feel largely pointless. There are 15 combinations you can try out, and only 2 or 3 have any real world, practical use in the game. I never found any use for the strawberry, or the ladybug ball, but maybe I just missed them. Another thing that feels pointless are wallet upgrades. Once you have them all, it's very likely you've bought almost everything, so you will eventually fill up the wallet, and have no where to go with it. Also, as I recall, nothing in the game costs 600 fruit. So like, why??

Graphics - 8/10

Spoiler

This is a very nice looking game. This is where the zen feeling really comes around full circle. Every inch of the game feels well crafted, and the jungle zone. Oh my the damn jungle zone is gorgeous. One in particular area, a waterfall, feels so expertly lived in and realized I looked forward to every trip back to it. The only real complaint is that some of the zones don't feel anywhere near as special, and some characters look creepy, specifically the island god and a turtle you can encounter while upgrading your wallet.

Wickerlings, Treasure Chests and Scarabs - 6/10

Spoiler

The games collectibles are really inventive, honestly. Scarabs are light imprints in pinball boards that require you to do something special to "unlock" them, flooding you with fruit once you do. Half the battle is figuring out what they want you to do, and they are rarely harder then the main board itself (you might trigger a few by accident, honestly).

Treasure chests are also pretty inventive to reach, though they are bit easier to come by. Wickerlings, however, are a copious collectible (80) that will definitely have you scrounging. These are pretty interesting to locate, and actually grabbing them can prove fairly challenging and annoying.

The other two collectibles, mailboxes and wallet upgrades, aren't anywhere near as hard to locate, or enjoyable to find for that matter. I already addressed the wallet upgrades, but the mail boxes are as forgettable as they come. I was actually surprised I had finished them, never really going out of my way too and collecting them all while exploring.

Trophies - 6/10

Spoiler

It's a serviceable list, having you do most everything in the game (you aren't required, for instance, to actually complete the Juicery quest, just get the Wickerlings hidden in it). The real issue is, like I complain about a lot, the grading of the trophies. Only one gold requires you do anything outside the story, while the rest are for completing the various areas and the game. Meanwhile, the collectibles are all silver, and I would argue are much more challenging (relatively speaking of course) then just finishing the game. Also, can we stop giving out trophies for doing something inconsequential 1,000 times please? This isn't an achievement, just a reminder you did something a bunch. Thanks.

Score - 6/10

Yoku's Island Express is fun for a short while, but the frustration that comes with playing the game is in direct contrast to it's zen like nature. It's still worth a look, and has a pretty easy platinum to boot.

willythom88 · August 31, 2020

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Yeeeeeeeeeeees Queen - PS4

Possibly my favorite genre, I hadn't played a good turn based JRPG in sometime that wasn't something I had already experienced. Sure, I could play Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9 or 10 again, but I needed something new. And boy howdy did I get it. Having never played more than a few hours of a Dragon Quest game before, I wasn't really sure what I was going to get, and I'm glad to say it was mesmerizing. However, it took a very long time to realize how much I'd miss it once it was gone.

Story - 7/10

Spoiler

Dragon Quest XI tells the story of the Luminary, a warrior foretold who would come and save the world from the Dark One. It's pretty standard stuff, but Dragon Quest XI feels different due to how it tells it's story. You are not going on some minor adventure where you'll hit a few towns, see some plot points, and then square off with the big bad. This feels like watching 5 seasons of a show in one game. There's a ton of story here, and Dragon Quest XI expertly (most of the time) paces itself well enough to keep the player engaged throughout. However, it doesn't manage to stick the landing the whole time.

It's only fair. My playthrough was a little over 180 hours, which included a ton of extra stuff not needed for the platinum. A lot of what you'll be doing honestly is world building, as the actual Luminary story line is wrapped up pretty simply across a few key scenes. My understanding is the average playthrough takes about 80 hours if you rush it, but why would you want to (more on that later). The real issue comes down to the world building leaning just a tad on the side of excessive. Sometimes the stories in smaller towns don't amount to much, and there are plenty of re-hashed narrative moments, especially in the opening act.

BELOW ARE SOME MINOR SPOILERS WITHIN A SPOILER FOR THE ACT STRUCTURE OF THE GAME!!!

Speaking of the opening act, it's a perfect example of the games occasional glacial pacing, as it took me about 60 hours to finish (again, my understanding for the average player is closer to the 30-40 hour mark). This feels excessive, and some later plot points actually retcon entire portions of earlier segments of the game (I kind of get it, it's sort of a "if you didn't like how that played out", but it does feel like it neuters the events of the game a little bit).

Characters (Narrative) - 7/10

Spoiler

My understanding is that in the original Japanese release, Dragon Quest XI didn't feature voice acting. I can't imagine playing this game without the voice overs, they MAKE these characters. From Rab to Veronica, every character is very well acted and written. I hate the word "charm" due to it's overuse but this game oozes it. I can't even begin to describe how easy it is to fall in love with the main cast, and even the characters with the most grating personalities (VERONICA) manage to grow on you over time. Unfortunately, the supporting cast is quite a bit different.

The games primary antagonist is very weak sauce, mostly being your stereotypical brooding Hot Topic manager of a bad guy. Another late game villain is cool looking from a design stand point, but feels wildly out of place from a narrative perspective. Some voiced characters escape feeling irritating, like Derk or the Queen of Sniffleheim and are actually pretty unique. Other characters, like the folks in Heliodor or Puerto Valor, are great as NPCs, but it seems like the more lines the character gets, the more likely they are to fall into obnoxious territory.

Light spoiler, but there's a kingdom where everything everyone says in a rhyme. I absolutely hate everything about this place. The plot to get here, actually exploring it, and especially the characters. It comes at point where the story is beginning to lag, and quite honestly, I hated every second of the plot (doesn't help the game introduces random encounters here, but I digress).

World Design - 10/10

Spoiler

Yes, it's that good. This game features some of the best designed and realized locales I have ever seen in a game. From the waterfalls of Dundrasil to the snowy plains of Snaerfelt, I adore every last inch of world Erdrea has to offer. Even the more common looking locations, like the various islands, all have little secrets tucked away for you to explore if you get creative enough. The way levels unfold and fold back into one another is fucking sublime, and I can't stress enough how much fun it is to explore the world. The only complaint I can even think of is sometimes world assets make it difficult to see enemies in battle, and this is easily rectified by moving the camera. Also, it's not a very common issue, mostly coming up in places like the cornfields outside of Warriors Rest Inn.

I also adore the way the game makes cel shaded graphics look just south of photo realistic. It's like if real life had a neat Photoshop filter over it. It's still cartoony, but the attention to detail and yet the world being realized in cel shading is so damn pretty, I honestly don't havce a single complaint. Top it off with the amazing array of towns, vistas and wilderness you have to explore, and it's astoundingly varied as well.

One minor issue is that some dungeons tend to look very similar to others (Kingsbarrow and the Cryptic Crypt come to mind). But it's a seldom seen problem, and honestly, I had to really think about it so it wouldn't seem like I thought it was flawless. It is though. Teehee. Just kidding. But it is. Nah. Actually...

Character Design - 8/10

Spoiler

Akira Toriyama, man. Guy is good, but is he good enough to scare us to death with really intimidating antagonists. No, as it turns out. He's not.

Complaints first, all the games antagonists are pretty low rent. Honestly, the lower rank, the cooler they look. The main bad guy looks like it Freeza and Ivan Ooze had a baby, and it's not very scary. Another late game antagonist is fucking precious, which really ruins the whole cosmic super villain vibe he's going for.

However, I did enjoy the protagonists looks, especially the Luminary. The small town boy vibe is strong with this one, and it was refreshing. I'm not a big fan of European style RPG characters (Old English knights and the like) so I appreciated the anime style look of all the characters (despite not being an anime fan, though that's not an issue of the visuals, and it's a story for another time). The decision to make the characters mostly English and Scottish was a nice touch (though what's up with Erik?). Additionally, the various villages and their respective accents and speaking patterns are nice (again, except for the damn rhyming!) and the world feels perfectly fleshed out because of the varied nature of the inhabitants within.

Crafting - 8/10

Spoiler

As someone who normally hates crafting, I think Dragon Quest XI may have nailed it. Where as in games like Horizon Zero Dawn it's very basic, and in games like Star Ocean: The Last Hope it's entirely too involved, Dragon Quest XI finds a mostly happy medium between the two. It's easy enough to globe trot and find recipes, and many of the games best recipes are behind additional challenges, like the Wheel of Harma. The mini game is also mostly enjoyable, though it doesn't always play nice.

To summarize, there are multiple zones on a piece of equipment you have to whack with a hammer. Each whack raises a bar foer that zone, and the goal is to hit it enough times and with enough force it lands in a specific spot. This would be fine, but it's very easy to over shoot that spot at times, and sometimes the bar drops down after you've hit a spot. This wouldn't matter if you didn't need to use Focus, an expendable resource, for every hit, making it very difficult, espiceally later in the game, to get things into that sweet spot. I will likely never be able to craft a Successful version of the ultimate sword, because it is just to cumbersome getting that bar up. Oh well. It's pretty fun regardless.

Also, materials can be collected by stealing (with Erik.....who sucks at stealing until pretty late in the game...which is fine cause that's when you'll be doing most of it) from enemies or buying them from shops. Honestly, once you have Zoom, which allows you to fast travel, this is trivialized by being able to just jump to each of the camps and then buy most materials from the camp vendor. Only a handful of them, needed for the platinum at least, actually require some real effort (serpent souls, for instance, can jump a hole and bury themselves; seriously, why can't Krystalinda give us a shop menu instead of making me talk to her for every damn Serpent Soul, GAH!). Sorry, kind of a spoilery tirade, but you'll see. Oh, yes you will.

Combat - 8/10

Spoiler

Dragon Quest XI errs on the side of traditional turn based combat, and what it lacks in originality it more than makes up for by being fun and smooth. The array of moves each character gets are fantastic, and while the game has something of aj ob system, it's pretty loose overall. Multiple characters can cast damaging magic, multiple characters can heal. Multiple characters can use whips, multiple characters can use claws (side note, I never used claws). The variety is great but each character still has things that make them special. Sylvando and Jade both use charming attacks, but can't use the same weapons (also, none of their attacks are the same, and Sylvando has the only attack that uses money instead of MP). Veronica has the strongest Magical Might in the game, and Serena has many of the best curative spells, as well as the best wind spell in the game. It seems very splatter shot at first, but honestly, the randomness makes every character feel unique, even when they share other characters qualities.

Pepping up (Limit break for Final Fantasy fans, and then again, not even) is a random occurrence where the characters abilities get stronger, and they can even perform special moves with other characters if they are pepped up. This is all in the name of sacrificing the pepped up status, which lasts multiple turns. Some of the Pep Powers are really fun to deploy, and some of them are borderline game breaking. It's a lot of fun, and adds to the excitement that keeps everything fresh. See, it can take a long time to get your characters to level 99, so it's very fortunate they have so many attacks to choose from to break up the monotony. You'll probably find a couple to stick to them, only replacing them when better ones come along, but that's only to be expected.

Honestly, the only reason I didn't give combat a 9 is the random encounters. More specifically, the random encounters on the boat. See, there are a number of ways to navigate Erdrea, and one of them is by boat. Now normally, when you are running around, you can see enemies on the field. This allows you to avoid them and not get into fights. Unfortunately, you can't do this on the boat. I feel like it would have been easy enough to put enemy sprites in the world map on the water, but they didn't do this. Sure they would have been kind of hard to see, but they could have been just comically large. I don't know. To top it off, you eventually have the ability to fly through the sky, and it feels like the random encounters could have carried over to this as well with flying enemies, like how the boat has water specific enemies. Alas it didn't happen. Instead, getting in the boat is a chore, and since it's the only weay to explore any of the small islands around the map, it makes going to them something you'll probably avoid like the plague.

Side Quests - 6/10

Spoiler

Dragon Quest XI has two types of side quests. Fetch and Pep. Fetch quests have you finding an item while Pep quests have you using a specific pep power on a specific enemy. To make this nice and short, I don't much care for either. Fetch quests would be a lot more involved, but once you have Zoom, you can complete them with little to no effort. Pep quests also require little in the way of effort, but you'll need to wait till later in the game when you have more option to triggering pep powers. A handful buck this trend, like having a certain item equipped to answer a riddle or delivering messages (but isn't that really the ultimate fetch quest?) and this is the only reason I didn't rate them lower. Also, the rewards are really good a lot of the time, so they are worth doing. Just doing them isn't all that interesting.

Side Content - 9/10

Spoiler

These are the things you can do outside of what the game calls quests, and they are really top notch.The Wheels of Harma and Drustan's Trials are fantastic little gauntlets to challenge your ability to act quickly. Additionally, they offer some great prizes. The only one I wouldn't write home about is the targets hidden around the various locales. The rewards are fine but like...it's kind of boring and traditional. Fortunately, events like horse races (which offer some pretty great rewards) and post game caps to each kingdoms stories are pretty nice touches that mostly work out for the better.

The Casino, BABY! - 4/10

Spoiler

Octagonia and Puerto Valor each have a casino, and I hate them both. They function like real world casinos, seemingly working on a very tight luck system. Sure you can go to Octagonia and a lady will occasionally tell you when the jackpot is coming. I don't care. It's mindless, and the fact you don't earn accolades or get to keep anything during a specific point of the story is nonsense. In short, 4/10 for being crazy repetitive and mindless, and making me feel stupid.

And Just a Healthy Dose of...What's This....oh....gross...sexism... - 3/10

Spoiler

The breed of sexism in this game occurs somewhat randomly, but when it happens it's pretty gross. It's not even the keeping women down kind of sexism, but the juvenile "haha, boobs" kind. Puff puff is sort of ingrained in the series, and I know some people don't want it removed. Ok, whatever, I don't care. It's just little things, here and there. A certain characters costumes are very scandalous. Another character seems to be very into nudey magazines (though this is more of a comment on him being a perv, so it's not really an issue). There's also a late game moment where you can get married, and it's handled....kind of gross. It has some definite "wishing for someone to love you" implications that don't age particularly well. Also, I don't know if Yuji Horii has seen Aladdin, but the Genie made it kind of clear this sort of gross nonsense was off limits.

Trophies and Accolades - 9/10

Spoiler

I really like this trophy list. Trophies are tied to in game achievements called Accolades. While the trophy list is fairly condensed, the Accolades list is much larger (around 250) and is much more difficult. There is no reward for getting them all, but once you've played through the casino several thousand times and perfected every recipe in the game, kind of seems like you don't need one.

The trophy list grabs the accolades that are most doable without being push overs and makes them into a very well scaled trophy list. Silvers are all mostly harder than bronze (save one, which requires you to kill 1,000 enemies, which, trust me, is nothing), and the gold really does cap the entire experience off. My only complaint comes down to the inconsistent nature of story trophies popping. Sometimes they take hours upon hours to reach the next story accolade/trophy, while other times they don't take nearly as long. Since most of the list is story trophies, it would be a bit nicer if they were slightly more consistent. BUT, it's not even kind of a deal breaker, and even the ones outside of the story related set are crazy rewarding to get.

Score - 7/10

I thoroughly enjoy this game, but it is rough around the edges sometimes. If you can get past it's occasional pacing issues, juvenile treatment of women and ridiculously annoying casino, this a must play JRPG, and possibly one of my favorites of all time. It's definitely my favorite world of all time in an RPG, that's for sure. Puerto Valor forever!

Edited September 9, 2020 by willythom88

willythom88 · October 19, 2020

I Am Setsuna - Old School to a fault - PS4
As far as old school inspired JRPGs go (whatever that term means now), I Am Setsuna is pretty on point. It definitely feels like a prettier version of something you would have seen on the SNES or even early PS1. Unfortunately, that's mostly to it's detriment.

Story - 6/10

Spoiler

I Am Setsuna sees the player cast as Endir, a man hired to kill Setsuna. She is a sacrifice, which in this world, means life or death for the planet. The pilgrimage, and eventual death of the sacrifice, is a long running tradition, and instead of carrying out his contract, Endir walks with Setsuna, accumulating a good group of friends and co-warriors in the processes. Unfortunately, the whole thing reaks of Final Fantasy X, but on a much smaller, much less intimate scale. Sure, you learn about each of these characters, but not really enough to ever care about most of them (though some stand outs include Nir and Julianne). Most of the main cast is drenched in JRPG tropes. An annoying kid, a mysterious figure, the tropes are all there, and they don't age particularly well.

However, I do want to give credit for the games willingness to be ridiculously bleak. Death permeates this world, and the game doesn't shy away from focusing in on it. Also, the story itself is fairly short, meaning most of the annoyance I previously mentioned don't feel like they last too long or overstay their welcome. All in all, it's a heavy story, and Tokyo RPG factory does a fairly okay job conveying it. It would be nice if it tried to circumvent some of the lesser elements of it's genre, but it won't turn off genre fans.

Gameplay - 5/10

Spoiler

The game follows a traditional turn based format, but character positioning is also key. This is not a grid based affair however. You need characters near one another for specific AOE healing attacks, or enemies near one another for specific AOE damage. Additionally, you can get behind enemies, making it more difficult for them to attack certain characters, though I didn't find myself doing this all that often (I can think of maybe one or two times). Additionally, you can let your time bar fill, and then wait to attack. Waiting fills another bar, which allows you to perform heavier versions of your existing moves. This works especially well when you consider that certain multi character attacks do massive damage, especially later in the game.

There's also fluxes, which are permanent boosts your various techs (Abilities) that occur randomly, and if you mix in a talisman, which boost certain components of each characters stats, you get a game with plenty of customization, especially considering the games smaller context. Unfortunately, not only does this grow tiresome even within the games short run time, it isn't explained very well at all. Sure, it's fun to use mega flash on a powerful enemy and do massive damage to them, but this also means once you find a specific set of skills that work for you, you will find it very unnecessary to mix things up.

Additionally, bosses and tougher enemies can be just as much about luck as they can about grinding stats, and this means you will often need to just bash your head against a seemingly unmovable force until you get through it. This is only noticeable later in the game, due a somewhat high difficulty spike towards the end. In fact, I never felt the need to go above level 35 on most characters until the end, when it became mandatory for some of the side content (not super bosses mind you, just side quests) and some of the later bosses in the main story. This uneven balancing is really obvious in the last few mandatory dungeons and in the side quests (if you can call them that, they all unlock at the same time and while they flesh out some characters stories, they are almost all very formulaic) and makes the last few hours annoying. The last boss fight, if you are going for a specific trophy in particular, is obnoxious, because even at level 60, with some powerhouse moves I had grinded several hours for, it felt like it came down to luck. Perhaps I just needed to grind a little bit more, but at that point, in the context of the game, it felt like it was the end.

Graphics - 4/10

Spoiler

Let's start by saying this is a beautiful game. The way parts of the world look like they were painted is absolutely sublime, and I love that about it. Sadly, thgat can't change the fact that almost every single environment looks exactly the same. With the exception of the end game area, there's only a couple places you can visit. Dungeon, cavern and town. All of these look very similar, if not completely identical. It makes it difficult to tell them apart, and especially in the case of dungeons, which one you are in should you need to know (you can go to the menu and it says, but you get my point). Towns are definitely the most diverse, but as the world has no major city (there is a large town like area but it is later re-skinned to be one of the last areas. The amount of copy and paste is understandable, given this was the studios first game, but it also isn't given how many other first time studios are at least able to make their world look different through out.

The same goes for town folks, most of whom are the same carbon copied folks from the last town (store fronts even utilize this to make it easy to locate the various sellers, which is moderately nice but still contributes to the overall problem). Monsters are all just clones of one another, which makes many of the more difficult bosses less intimidating, since you have already seen this, but in a different color palette.

Music - 7/10

Spoiler

The score, which is entirely composed of piano solos, is just shy of perfect. It feels somewhat limited in terms of track count, but ultimately, it's the best part of the game. The somber pieces are always placed perfectly, and the speedy pieces, usually for battle, are also fantastic. The lack of variety is really the only complaint here, as the track list feels very short, and it does stick out from time to time. However, it also disappears into the background, which is what a good track should do. If it distracts you, even with how good it is, it's not good for a video game soundtrack (though I'm told titles like Persona will change my mind on that, I haven't played any yet).Fortunately, that's exactly what this sound track does, and it works just well enough for it.

Trophies - 4/10

Spoiler

Look, the only redeeming thing about this trophy list is how the story related trophies are designed (Meet so and so, is a cool way not giver away too much of the story but not be a pretentious ass like Final Fantasy 13). There's also one where you have to do something specific in a story fight, but it's nothing special. Honestly, this list sucks.

The grading of trophies is poorly balanced (I get a silver for doing 100 momentums, something that I ended up doing over a thousand times, AND I get a silver for 200 fluxes? Something that took a lot more effort and I barely had the patience for gets a silver, but beating one of the superbosses (who, in my opinion, was easier than the last boss), gets me a gold. Pfft, get out of here. Alsop, what makes those food items so special they get trophies, but Fried Dumpling Soup, arguably the best food item for trophy hunting in the game, gets nothing? This list is all over the places, doesn't have you do everything in the game, and doesn't grade particularly well. It's moderately challenging, but honestly, most of it is either mindless grinding, or trivialized by getting the airship. Perhaps beating each of the optional dungeons, or trying all the cuisine, would have been better. And again, that 200 fluxes trophy can get bent.

Score - 5/10

I would recommend this as a first time JRPG, but that's honestly about it. There's a point where nostalgia no longer provides a good enough excuse for a games short comings. While I can definitely see why someone would enjoy this game, it's definitely not for me, and I will likely never revisit it.

Willythom88's Backlogged and Stagnant

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