Little Nightmares II (PS5 PS Plus)

Possibly the most disturbing overall story in gaming. Also open to a lot of interpretation when combined with the first game- I mean, people cannot even totally agree upon whether this is a true sequel or a prequel to the first game. Personally, I think it makes more sense as a prequel- but I won't go into why as it cannot be done without brutal spoilers.

Just like the first game the music and graphics are amazing at setting the mood. Gameplay wise, I'm not as happy with the game. There is far too much trial and error, scenes that I fail to see how the player could avoid death without prior knowledge from failing already. Even once you know what to do, the game still requires precise use of the controls and even a bit of luck. That is why I think last year's Bramble: The Mountain King is the much better game. Bramble had those sudden moments of revelation where you would suddenly realize what you need to do, then you just do it. In Little Nightmares you are often waiting for a revelation, but it never comes- the revelation is simply that you must Git Gudder with what you're already doing.

Anyway, still worth playing as it's only 5-6 hours long, so you finish before the more tedious aspects give you loose stools. On a different note, I'm curious as to how some of the games mechanics can work for someone playing with mouse and keyboard. Things like rotating the analogue stick and feeling for the vibration...not everyone has a vibrating mouse and how is the rotation movement translated to mouse and keyboard in a way that works the same. That could be why so many PC reviews complain about the controls. Just play with a controller.

Man, you can really write a good old post, like the ones back then: they don't make 'em like that anymore..
This is the contribution I wished the Internet were all about. To speak like them youngsters, "quality content", well thought-out.

I'm partly joking, I'm really not so old and I managed to see a glimpse of what the web was until recently, but I liked it better, more reflections, more human-like interaction, more depth and discussion. The current fast style is convenient sometimes, but tends to be shallow

Thanks! Karateka was one of my first favorite games, so I'm probably a bit more keyed in on it and have more to say than about many newer games. It's one of those games that comes from a time when they were making up the rules as they went, compared to how game design is now quite formalized and it's harder for games to feel distinct from one another.

Lego Harry Potter- Years 5-7 (PS5 PS Plus)

Time to clear up some PS Plus titles before my subscription runs out next month. I won't be resubscribing. I played Seasons 1-4 over a year ago. The second game feels like it has less platforming and more combat as each year progresses. The combat in this game isn't very good and the duels get tedious. The rest of the game was actually pretty good, though the Skywalker Saga was a better game overall, of the Lego franchises I've played. IT looks as though this remastered collection finally comes to PC this month as well.

Stray Gods The Roleplaying Musical, Sep 29 (GOG)-Beat this one on Sunday. It's like a musical Telltale style game so you know what you're in for when you play it. The plot was interesting, the songs were good, voice acting was excellent, the decisions were marginal. I had a good time for a few hours with a new take on Greek mythology. The game did stutter much more than I would have expected but it never crashed.

Full List

Doki Doki Literature Club (PS5 PS Plus)

What the hell did I just experience? It's a VN, it's a dating sim, it makes fun of you for playing a dating sim. It is rated overwhelmingly positive on Steam. It's pretty good.

Isn't it a free PC game (I always see that cited but I never played it)? Is there a different version for PS5?

Thanks

Valor & Victory (Steam)

Digital adaptation of the boardgame of the same name, which itself is an alternative to the Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader game systems. So, it's a tactical simulation of squad level infantry tactics. I have lots of old Avalon Hill Squad Leader and ASL stuff, so I'm quite familiar with it. Valor & Victory is for someone that doesn't want the complexity of ASL...or even the original SL.

The simplifications of Valor & Victory change the feel of the combat to a surprising degree. The morale system of the SL/ASL system is gone or abstracted. This makes tactics feel much more about simple attrition, since squads just loose strength rather than breaking and cowering- giving you no chance to recover your losses using leaders. I don't like the simplification because it reduces the importance of good leaders on the battlefield, as well as the differences in staying power of elite or special forces like Paratroopers and German SS units- which could withstand heavy combat and still remain effective.

Despite my general issue with the systems, this video game adaptation of Valor & Victory is very fast paced and still rewards logical infantry tactics and punishes bad or irrational play. The game covers small unit action between German and American or British (mostly paratroopers and commando's) behind the initial Normandy landing beaches just after D-Day. Most of the 19 scenarios play in less than 30 minutes because of the small number of units and the simplicity of the systems. The AI of the game is reasonable when it is defending, but terrible on the attack- lacking much aggressiveness and possessing no understanding of the concept of drawing fire with a decoy. So, I got Major or Decisive victories for every scenario when playing the defensive side. As the attacker some of the scenarios are difficult simply because of the time limit imposed. You do have the option in the scenario setup screen to lengthen the turn count if you want.

Overall, it's okay for a fast paced, turn based tactics game- especially if you get it on sale like I did. It also has 4 DLC's for different WW2 theatres. I may get some of them on sale sometime. In the meantime, I'm more interested in finally getting into either the older Tigers on the Hunt or the much newer Second Front game to see if they finally achieve the holy grail of a computer adaptation of Squad Leader.

I finished Broken World, which not only continues and concludes the main story, but it is also narrated what happened to some other in-game characters.

Some time ago, I got Maid of Sker for free. Since it is relatively short game (took me slightly above 6 hours) it is great for working man, or at least I thought so. Game is linear walking simulator with some jump scares (2 or 3 in the whole game) and horror like atmosphere, but it is not terrifying as other games. Generally I would say average game for a weekend.

Visions of Mana:

This was a great game. I mean that sincerely, this is probably the best game I played this year that was released this year (mainly a contest between this and Granblue Fantasy ReLink and Dragon's Dogma II). It's not the deepest RPG and I do not have the most to say about it. I played it with my brother as a project game which probably enhanced my enjoyment of the game also.

The art is excellent and the game is beautiful... except when it is not. So, a nagging problem I have in some areas of the game (especially in the opening field) that small parts look like they were filled in with AI assistance. Odd things like a waterfall to nowhere, grass in the middle of a pond with the normal grass textures, and peculiar geometries (not the Cthulhu kind) were noticeable on occasion. Also, constant Unreal Engine asset streaming issues combined with their crappy inability to render water near another object without the scene wigging out.

The story is actually pretty good for a Mana game, if you ask me. The main character goes through a meaningful journey and the major punch in the game is not pulled at any point with magical bullspit. That said, the final motivating factor for the primary villain is almost silly in how weak it is. I feel like five minutes of creative thought would have fixed it but this game has lots of tell tale signs it was rushed.

The main sign of being rushed was the crashing. It is never catastrophic the way the game handles saves and autosaves but it was about half to a dozen times for me. Also, the post game feels... odd. So, it more or less is not essential to beating the game... unless they just placed the same content naturally in the normal progression of the story or if they just slightly tweaked it to take place later. I think it would have worked nicely then. As it stands it is not like Trials of Mana or Dragon Quest XI in that not doing the post game is not beating the game. You can quit after the credits and not be hurt by it, if you ask me.

Overall, this game was everything I wanted a Mana game on modern systems to be and I am pretty happy to have played it. The combat is fun, the customization is legit and quite intriguing, the characters are occasionally hilarious and play very well together, and the game as a whole is a very satisfactory package. Took me about 70ish hours without feeling like it is dragging (unlike Granblue which feels like it is yanking your chain in the chapters leading up to the finale... and then it is not really over.).

The Crimson Diamond. A spiritual successor to The Colonel's Bequest, using the same EGA-based style and a text parser. In this one, you control Nancy Maple, a geology student who goes to a small settlement to investigate the possibilities of diamonds being discovered there. Shortly after arriving someone is murdered and the only bridge in is blown up, so you've got to go around and collect clues to figure out what's going on.

Much like Colonel's Bequest, there are some regular puzzles to solve but the primary emphasis is on just exploring and looking at stuff, while also eavesdropping on the other people staying at the inn. You want to be as thorough as possible in examining stuff. Like, first you want to look at a particular thing and then you want to EXAMINE that thing to get even more detail, and then act on whatever extra detail you get from that examination, like dusting and lifting fingerprints and such. You do have to be careful about moving around because it's somewhat easy to trigger things before you're ready. There were at least two major events I missed inadvertently that hampered my understanding of the case. I found clues later that didn't entirely make sense because I missed the reasons they were in their spots. The game is clearly meant to be replayable so you can find more stuff and fill out your solution to the case. The game does link to an online hint book if you just want to use that, too.

The parser is quite good. I was a little taken aback when the game didn't understand a command like "use" but for the most part I didn't have too many instances of "I don't understand" or "you can't do that" and was able to do just about everything I intended. I've always been in favor of bringing text parsers back, so I'm pretty happy with how this one performed.

The graphics and animation are very nice. The locations have a lot of character and detail but everything is very clear and when something changes in an area it will usually jump out at you immediately, assuming you've been paying attention.

As a story it holds together pretty well and everything makes sense. Comparing it to Colonel's Bequest, it's a bit more straight-laced and dry. There's only one actual victim in the case compared to the slasher movie body count in the Sierra game. I'll admit that I do prefer Sierra's style - I loved stumbling across the bodies in their varying states and there's that great giallo-like moment toward the end when you find everyone piled up in a pit - but it's really just a matter of preference. I'm sure many players will prefer a less campy take on the concept.

Finally found some time and "energy" to play games again after several intense months of work. Ironically the only thing that allowed me to do so was catching a really bad cold and being literally unable to do anything productive for several days. So I decided to finally complete my run through Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and finish Mass Effect 3 for the first time.

I hated it.

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration but I do hate how little is left of what made me fall in love with the series in the first place.

In this entry of the series the main theme is war. You know, that thing that like 90% of video games are about and honestly, to me Mass Effect 3 feels more like a poor man's Gears of War than anything else. Heck, one of the few new characters, James, literally looks, sounds and behaves like a Gears reject.

Already Mass Effect 2 was an exercise in removing as much role-playing from role-playing games as possible. ME2 landed just barely on that very thin line where it's still kind of an RPG and certainly a good game. With ME3 the devs just blasted through that line, yelling "fuck RPGs, bro!" and throwing an empty beer can at the poor fellow guarding that line.

It continues ME2's pattern of not really leaving you with any choices whatsoever. Pick one of the two paths (which you probably already did two games ago) and just point in the corresponding direction during all dialogue choices through the rest of the game. Or even turn on automatic dialogue choices in the settings. Yeah, that's actually a thing here. Jesus.

One thing that is utterly gone now is the experience of exploring the universe. Again, already ME2 did that compared to ME1 but in ME3 they went as far as removing all hubs except the Citadel. Literally every other location throughout the game is either a scripted tunnel or just a small combat arena. You do get the occasional nice vista but it's all just a background for Gears-like cover shooter combat. You never get to breathe in such a place with its history and culture and mysteries, you never really navigate alien places, you just blindly follow that one path towards the objective. And most places are samey sci-fi corridors anyway.

And also the Citadel is just a shitty hub that feels like it was forcefully squeezed into a linear shooter in order to double the playtime by making you run around the exact same small and somehow still frustratingly large areas where nothing ever happens. But if you're a completionist you will run around that shitty hub a lot because 1. the game loves randomly spawning quest givers there and 2. it also has the shittiest quest log and game structure in any RPG ever with lots of missable content and few tools that help you avoid missing such content.

And of course, like in ME2, your companions and other buddies are all scattered throughout four levels of the Normandy and if you want to experience all the story content you will have to constantly visit all of these decks. But this time almost none of that content is actual interactive dialogue, most of the time it's just a few fixed lines from the NPC. And of course this time there's no companion missions, all of that busy work is only rewarded with the occasional paragon, renegade or "reputation" points which are apparently also a thing now. I honestly have no idea how that new system works but frankly I don't care because it doesn't matter anyway.

Oh, and then they also fucked up the space map thingy. I knew that, like in ME2, there's only some scanning mini game this time but holy shit, this one was perfectly designed specifically in such a way that you'd use guides because most of the time each scan increases Reaper alertness, so you want to make sure that you find something every time you perform a scan. And what happens when Reapers appear? They will just follow you around at a growing speed and if they touch you... there's several seconds of nothing and then a game over screen appears. Seriously, Asteroids had more production value than that.

So honestly, as far as I'm concerned all "RPG" stuff in this game is so bad that I wish they had just dropped it altogether and just made it a linear shooter. Yeah, that would have eliminated like 70% of the playtime but it would be 70% less of shit. And it frustrates me to no end that BioWare wasn't called out for this offensively shitty design.

Oh and don't get me started on the RPG progression mechanics. Being a hoarder I only ran around with what I found most of the time but at some point I figured, hey, let's see what happens if I put some money into a gun. I started one-shotting almost anything that moves. I spent just a fraction of my money and the combat went from (sometimes) frustratingly challenging to utterly trivial.

Of course I still enjoyed a lot of things about this game. It still has a pretty good writing, epic scale, high production value and it's hard not to get attached to the characters in particular. There are many spectacular and emotional moments here. But let's be honest: it's a shitty RPG and a mediocre cover shooter with good content.

Oh, and in my opinion the big reveal of why the Reapers do all the reaping was asinine, especially since on your way there two big things happen (depending on your dialogue choices) that directly undermine the whole point of the Reapers but the final dialogue just does not acknowledge them. That's just shitty writing.

7/10