December was a month of being sucked into games I expected to be middling on and having milquetoast reactions to games I was hoping to love. I'll take the bad with the good I suppose, but it does leave me in an odd doldrum right as we cross over to the new year. Mostly I'm just hoping one day I'll wake up and Silksong will be out.

Last Call BBS - I'd played this before on gamepass but got it in a Humble Bundle or something. I avoided getting quite as sucked in as last time, mostly because I already know I'm not too keen on the algorithmic conveyor belt puzzles and don't feel the need to do virtual gunpla. Still delightfully nostalgic, but I think I'll stick to the Solitaire Collection, especially since the Klondike in Last Call BBS doesn't support click and drag. Because of course it doesn't.

Small Saga - I have complicated feelings about this game. Whatever it is, it's not subtle. Tonally discordant, obsessed with phrasing things like a terminally online liberal in a manner that struck me as twee more than principled, bursting with care and deliberate structure, graphically beautiful, and above all else it feels uncompromised. Small Saga feels like the game the devs wanted to make, even if that meant the game about a mouse wielding a pocket knife like Cloud's buster sword against an octopus went out of its way to have the quick time event for every group action be repeatedly hitting Left specifically. Also they didn't have the stones to tell the fascists that if force is the only rule of law then they should capitulate when they lose. Though, they also gave me Gwen, the bisexual rat dragoon who does bonus damage to cops and responds to the statement that the stoat in full plate would eat her if she tried to get in her armor with "God I wish". Complex feelings.

Worldless - I wishlist damn near every metroidvania on steam and turn based real time combat sounded interesting, even if Indivisible sort of went that direction before bursting into flames (rip Razmi, you're in a better game in my heart). Bought it after seeing positive chatter on cohost but sadly didn't quite click with me. All the enemies felt like puzzle bosses, and I have very little patience for metroidvanias with a firm separation between their combat tools and navigation tools. Outland remains the best Ikaruga metroidvania.

Immortals of Aveum - The most generic game I have seen in my life, and I only played it because a friend of a friend had a hookup in EA with keys to burn. On its face the idea of combining a Borderlands semi-open world containing primarily corridors full of enemies and its elemental gunplay with mild metroidvania elements to incentivize returning to prior zones sounds reasonable. The game lost me by degrees when even when I cranked the settings down and lowered my resolution to 1080p the game still threatened to melt my 2070 Super and was getting single-digit FPS in some cutscenes, and the multiple walk and talk segments tutorializing every single mechanic and introducing me to NPCs I never saw again didn't help. The MC being Chris Pratt at home actively hurt. However, it felt really good to shoot people with big boomy spells and hit them with the magic megapunch, and speccing so that I could shatter wards with my basic melee attack let me feel like I was playing a different genre of game than the AI expected. Also they have a tsundere muscle mommy who wants to kick your head into your ribcage then kiss your hair, and I appreciate that.

Fight Knight - I held off on this game for a year hoping for some resolution on the allegations of severe misconduct within the dev team and for my patience I was rewarded with absolutely no clarity nor perspective into the lives of people I'll never meet and whose wishes are utterly opaque to me. As such I bought it. Feels pretty good to punch things, navigation is pleasantly obtuse, but for a game that's as brutal when you die and expects you to make periodic trips down the tower to save and drop off supplies it's a real fucker to leave. Also it has the same problem as Bullets Per Minute where the artstyle is striking but makes every level look the same even if it's different colors.

Dungeon Drafters - I like mystery dungeon games. I sometimes like deckbuilders even if they normally just make me want to play Magic again. I was hoping this was at the seam, but it turns out it just falls through the cracks. As I explained it to a friend, classic Roguelikes and mystery dungeon games are about using player knowledge and consistent tools to confront randomized scenarios, with heavy emphasis on sequencing and positioning. Deckbuilders are about using randomized tools against known scenarios. The result of mixing them is that your bread and butter actions might not be available to you, and drawing the wrong half of your deck is very common unless you load it up with very redundant cards. I'm sure if I put effort into cracking this nut I'd find something, but movement is glacial, enemy turns are sluggish, and overall I'm uninterested in exploring its systems enough to find out if I like what's underneath.

Cats Hidden in Jingle Jam - I've played a few of them, they're cute. They also have an achievement for each of the 100 cats so playing a few of them fucked up my achievement counts for the year something serious.

Sir Whoopass: Immortal Death - I was in the mood for a shitty game, and this shone through like a beacon. I was hoping for Shrek meets Skyrim and instead I got something that feels like a 6/10 PS2 game in a bad way. Games using humor to paper over weak mechanics isn't new, but when you can shoot into the air by dodge rolling at a slope and go high enough to take lethal fall damage, the joke on your loading screen isn't going to be funny enough to make me keep playing. The fact that I'm invincible while guarding and can therefore avoid fall damage if I block in time IS funny enough to make me keep playing.

Shadow Man Remastered: There is an aesthetic I absolutely adore but can't articulate of weirdly grungy, natural, lived-in spaces that have an aura of decayed purpose to them. Vexx has it. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos has it. And Shadow Man Remastered has it. I had this on my wishlist after seeing it in some online review years ago and was given it as a gift. I don't know why this game isn't on every list of metroidvanias as it feels like it took the same ideas as classic Tomb Raider but used them to build the skeleton of what would become the 3D metroidvania genre before it was even attempted. Levels are dense and full of interconnections that constantly surprise with their gracefulness. The sound design is phenomenal and gives every area its own distinct feel. Areas are distinct and vivid even with the blocky Dreamcast graphics. The dungeons are a fascinating picture of what a dungeon could be when not taking direct inspiration from the Zelda mold. My favorite thing about it is that there's 120 Dark Souls (every mention of them being just as funny as Bubblegum Crisis talking about Boomers) hidden in the world, and as you find them your shadow level increases at roughly X^2 dark souls = shadow level X. Shadow Level controls what doors you can open, your maximum mana, and the max charge level of your primary weapon. It dovetails collectables, zone progression, and character power in a way I've never seen copied but is beautifully elegant. Apparently there's a new one coming out next year somehow, and I'm fascinated to see how it goes.


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