Illness claims a second week in a row. I was improving, and then got sicker again, and am now finally on the mend... maybe. Such is the immune compromised life.
I played a lot more Slice & Dice. The "Raid" mode, involving a team of 10 taking on double the usual total enemies is a lot of fun, and unlocks a surprisingly deep extra-set of synergies and strategy in the process. I also started playing the regular game mode in "unfair" mode, which is less fun but kind of doable. As with the Hard mode, the biggest issue is that the curses suck the fun out of the game. Except now you need to pick 10 "points" worth, (maybe with a bonus blessing for negative points.) This seems like it would add choice, the mathematics of the available curses' values always work out to giving you very few options and always include at least one that makes the game suck.
Path of Achra is a roguelike that I was introduced to last year, while it was in early access, and was instantly hooked. This week it reached version 1.0 and it's still great. The game is most similar to Rift Wizard's (which has become an unlikely subgenre pioneer) mouse driven magic combat. And as with Rift Wizard, the game can be easily played with the mouse (though there are keyboard commands). But this game involves you picking one of many classes, cultures, and deities for your character. Before moving left to right across an overmap, through a series of self contained tile-based roguelike combat scenarios. Leveling up and putting points into various skills as you go.
The key gimmick of Path of Achra is that you are instantly extremely overpowered, and probably from the first attack you will be spawning dozens of effects and powers in a single game turn. It's not uncommon to build a character built entirely around standing still and doing nothing while a cavalcade of "On Stand Still" powers trigger and murder your enemies. Enemies however are equally overpowered, which just adds to the glorious confusion. It's a really satisfying game that I have finished twice already, and there's a lot of variety to find in the various characters and powers in the game.
If you like Solitaire, I must recommend PySol Fan Club edition. Which is a free Solitaire collection for many platforms. Version 3.0 released recently and it has 1200 variants (with multiple playing card types, or even mahjong or slide-puzzles) in its current form. Most of them are terrible. But some aren't.
A Guidebook of Babel is a comedic point and click/puzzle game that seems to be set in the afterlife, and seems to be themed around knowing where a sequence of events goes wrong, resetting the time loop and intervening at said moment. The game starts interestingly with a fun sense of humour. But I'm in the second level now, I have one method of interacting with the game, about 10 things to interact with, and every single one of them gives a failure message. On top of that it seems to be a mobile game originally, and is really obnoxious about making "press and hold" the default interaction with the most common and frequent actions.
May 9th had four games that I had been looking forward to, all release within two hours of each other. Here are my opinions of these games:
Cryptmaster is a first person 'blobber' game, with the gimmick that you interact with the world by typing out words, usually triggering a comedic response from the games demonic narrator in the process. I have not really played that far into the game, but I am enjoying it. However it is a bit cumbersome in some ways. The combat is executed by typing out powers ("hit","zap",etc) which seems to work fine, but there is also a poorly explained cooldown mechanic. This has resulted in one of my characters immediately dying in the tutorial, with no explanation of what to do or even acknowledgement.
Crow Country is a survival horror game that merges the gameplay of early resident evils, with the aesthetics of Final Fantasy VII. I haven't played too much so far, but it's a reasonably creepy story set in a the titular theme park of "Crow Country". You traverse the world fighting zombies and finding mysterious items to put in other items. The game could stand to be a bit less obtuse in its most basic gameplay (eh. interactable items will often only be noticeably marked as such after you've walked by.) But I'm looking forward to going back to it.
I've played a few hours of Animal Well. Which is an absolutely gorgeous puzzle platformer, with an incredible mood and sense of mystery. The game gives very little context other than that there are four blips on the map to collect, and from there you traverse the map collecting power ups that enable further traversal, etc. The game draws a clear inspiration from the best of the genre such as Fez or Tunic.
Strangely for a game in this style, Animal Well also takes inspiration from the unusual source of narrative heavy games that force you to rewatch 20 minute fight-intro cutscene every time you die. There's a real dedication and craft to the way they've made the game unpleasant. Checkpointing is terrible. The fast travel (once it unlocks) is obtuse, cumbersome and connects to the most illogical places. There's a lot of "downhill" sections that easily lead the player into trouble, and make it nearly impossible to retreat to an area to save progress. There's no consistency about whether partially complete screens will or won't save progress after death, or even if you will die or merely be placed safely before a hazard (Some of the worst bosses are the ones that don't kill you, because you end up trapped.) I could keep going on forever... and will. There's mainline-progression that is just hidden behind walls that are inexplicably illusory. And most annoyingly, you'll quickly realise that there will be no great revelatory moment, and that "Dodge four obstacles, and then if you execute three jumps with no error there will be a two frame window to pass an obstacle" is 9 times out of 10 the intended solution.
My favourite game of these four so far is 1000xResist. Which is a narrative focused sci-fi game themed around time-travel. The game seems to cycle between playing as the character "Watcher" living amongst a population of clones in a sealed idyllic garden in a distant future; And flashbacks to the mid-21st character Iris, (The one whom the clones originated from, and the daughter of Hong-Kong dissidents. Which is a very common symbolic motif in the game) living her life at the onset of the plague and alien-invasion from "The Occupants" that ruined the future. The gameplay is pretty light, but is enough to keep the game interesting, and mostly revolves around "zips" between teleport points or time-traveling back and forth around obstacles in one time. The visuals and audio are quite striking too. Some of the environments seem quite sparse, and almost amateurish, but you'll also encounter very deliberate and elaborate areas within the environment that suggest an incredible deliberateness to the aesthetic. Similarly, the game is fully voice acted, with some actors seeming quite amateur at times, but then will change tone in a way that suggests more intent.
It's the narrative of 1000xResist that is the most compelling though. The contrast between the alien society of the clones in the future, and the more understandable human story of the 21st century is an effective one. And the way those two stories interact is incredibly strange in a lot of ways, but really gripping in others. And thene there's weird things like an inexplicable giant "Pigeon Prime" in the middle of a ruined school. Really great game, I can't wait to finish it.
All Games Played
- Slice & Dice: GREAT (Notable)
- Path of Achra: GREAT (Notable)
- Pysol - Fan Club Edition: GREAT
- A Guidebook of Babel: Disappointing
- Cryptmaster: Good
- Crow Country: Good
- Animal Well: OK
- 1000xResist: GREAT (Notable)
