I’ve put 180 hours into
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is more than what I put into the original game and New Leaf combined. I agree with many of the criticisms I’ve seen (poor online, locking an island and save to a piece of hardware being a serious dick move, the RNG being seriously out of whack—I have never had a single meteor shower, Celeste and Redd almost never show up, but I’ve caught four coelacanths and five whale sharks, what the heck is up with that?). but the core of it is still soothing enough that it’s been my go-to stress reliever since March. Still like fishing, still feel obligated to catch bugs even though I only really like the butterflies, still enjoy building a ludicrously massive wardrobe and changing clothes often. The crafting is pretty dull and just there for padding, but it only takes a few minutes a day to get enough stuff in case my tools break or I want to build some DIY stuff, so whatever.
Timespinner was also a pretty good time. I’m impressed by the way a relatively small team came close to perfectly nailing the feel of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. There’s a bit of a hitch when you try to turn back and forth sometimes, and that’s the biggest complaint I have about the controls. It feels really good to play. experimenting with orb and ring loadouts and figuring out how to break the game after you’ve done everything else is good fun. Nice to see LGBTQA+ representation that isn’t about being miserable or murdering dogs *cough.* You do have to do the sidequests or Lunais’s character arc makes almost no sense at all, a problem compounded by having multiple ending choices. Does she want revenge or justice? By making that a binary choice it kinda hobbles her character. The writing in this game really needed another draft and another pass through editing. But if you get bored with fighting minor enemies you can chuck a sun at them 11/10
I liked it enough to do all the achievements twice and play on all the difficulties across multiple runs, which took a nice 70 hours for probably 10 or 11 playthroughs (you can seriously speedrun this when you know where all the mandatory bosses and abilities that don’t carry into NG+ are, a 100% run at that point might take 2 or 3 hours depending on your level and equipment).
Enter the Gungeon: I watched multiple streams and an LP of this and convinced myself I’d love it based on enjoying watching other people be good at it. Put an hour into it and was done forever because I will never be good at bullet hell games.
Rogue Legacy: I got five hours out of this before I realized that I was in the 2100s, had enough abilities to make it through the entire map, and still couldn’t beat the first fucking boss at level 40 because I lack basic pattern recognition or something
Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight: a Dark Souls Metroidvania sounded neat until I realized that your build revolves around the leaf, the bow, the dodge roll, and whatever modifiers you can find/buy/earn. I still don’t know what I think of it or whether I like it.
SOTN: I bought this for my old iPad because it is my mission in life to beat this game on as many different devices as possible, I guess
Little Inferno: see above
The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories: Oh boy.
I understand why this game kicked up a debate in trans communities. Trans stories told by cis people are often misery porn. But this game mirrored so many of my own life experiences that it hit a raw nerve. Being forcibly outed by “friends,” depression, unhealthy self-hatred... I was pretty close to saying “fuck this game, why did I do this to myself.” But then the ending happened and I started ugly crying. This totally is a game about healing, and regeneration, and rebirth, and never giving up. For me, that made a crucial difference. But if anyone feels the opposite way, and despises this game, you are 100% valid for feeling that way and I won’t argue with that.
Really wasn’t expecting that from a Swery game, considering how awful Deadly Premonition is at handling both women and queer-coded characters.
GRIS: This is an incredibly beautiful puzzle-platforming game about grief and it made me cry a few times. It’s short, sweet, and isn’t too awfully difficult (which might be a minus for some people). But I think the experience of going in blind and being overwhelmed by the art, music, and design is well worth it. To heck with whatever Naughty Dog puts out, I am very comfortable considering this game to be both art and good. I don’t think you could get the same experience from watching a movie or reading a book. You need to have the interactivity for many of the game’s set pieces to work as intended.
This has been showing up on sale and in bundles a lot lately, it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t already (or don’t like these sorts of games).
Super Mario Maker 2: I.... kinda don’t like this game. I loved the first one but I’m sick of the mix of Kaizo troll levels, levels that basically amount to an empty room with a flagpole, and those automated Rube Goldberg machine levels. I tried the story mode and gave up when I got to a level where the gimmick is not jumping, ever, and 40 years of muscle memory fight me and want to make Mario jump.
I already know I can’t design levels to save my life, so why did I want this when it went on sale back in March? It’s a well-made game that does what it says it will do and if you’re into it, you’ll really be into it. I’m just not into it anymore, I guess.
Yoshi’s Crafted World: 100%ing this looks like something I don’t want to do but it was okay enough. My brother gave it to me, as with SMM 2, so I might have felt a lot differently if A) he had paid $60 and especially B) if I had paid $60. The soundtrack was not that great and I was a little disappointed that this was the successor to Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Yoshi’s Wooly World, but it was still fun to unlock ridiculous costumes and cruise around levels dressed up as a sheep or a milk can.
A Robot Named Fight!: I watched several old streams of Vinny playing this game, and, you know, it looked really unpolished, with ugly sprites (that sometimes look a lot like they’re ripped straight from Super Metroid), but he kept saying he enjoyed it a lot despite that. So I figured, well, I have nothing better to do with Turmpbucks other than charity, bills, and some savings, I can spare $13 for a game.
I wish I hadn’t spent that $13 on a game. I don’t want to be hard on the guy who made it, because he seems like a good dude on his Twitter. He keeps updating the game every so often for free when he could have charged for the expansions he added. It’s a passion project and I feel bad for unloading on those. Games are fucking hard to make. But the writing is basically the same thing as Spec Ops except much more nonsensical (“The robots are fighting for freedom from the flesh!” “NO ROBOT YOU ARE THE FASCIST” and then the robot was a fascist... take note that this game was made by a guy who despises the fash, so I don’t think he was trying to glorify anything).
Also, the physics engine is identical to Super Metroid. This is kind of a bad thing, because precise platforming is a thing in this game (surprise! It’s a roguelite Metroidvania, like seemingly every other big indie game since Dead Cells hit it big), and Super Metroid’s physics... look, I love Super Metroid to an unreasonable degree, but its physics are floaty and awful. None of the original Metroid games have great physics or feel that good to play compared to Zero Mission, Igavanias, Hollow Knight, Timespinner, etc. I don’t want to platform over randomly generated spike pits on tiny platforms with those physics. I don’t want to play “Super Metroid but your robot is a mindless fascist [as far as the very thinly written world building goes—there’s “Fuck Robot Fascism” graffiti everywhere in a later area] and everything explodes into bloody gibs.” I had misgivings, I didn’t listen to them, and, well, I should have. I managed to complete a run because it’s far easier than Rogue Legacy or Gungeon, but I’m done with this one, I guess.
Puzzle Quest: I revisited the original Puzzle Quest! I’d forgotten how obnoxious the RNG can be when you lose an entire match without moving because the enemy moved first and got to stunlock me for 13 turns, draining my entire HP bar! Ditto when I did the same to a boss, because it feels so rewarding to blunder into complete victory from making one match! /s After 5 hours I realized that I was just playing a version of Bejeweled that pissed me off so I went back to Bejeweled Classic instead. There’s probably more polished iterations of this idea out there somewhere at this point.
Namco Museum: Sometimes when you’re old, you just want to go back and play Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig-Dug at random. Also I found my DS Lite and replaced the battery and it still works!
Sundered: Eldritch Edition: What I’m currently playing. I wish the maps weren’t procedurally generated, because as with most proc gen games I’ve played, the asset reuse quickly becomes obvious. Also it’s a roguelite Metroidvania (sort of). I am having trouble thinking of inexpensive things to play after three months and change of quarantine and this seems to be on sale a lot. But the animation is hand-drawn and looks gorgeous. It’s so fluid. And the combat system is so much more fun and fluid than the other games in this genre I’ve tried so far. You have a shield, to take hits for you, which starts off quite small and recharges slowly. You have a really good dodge, but your stamina meter only allows you 3 dodges at first, so you’re pretty squishy and liable to take damage and die if you don’t keep moving. And you will take damage, because eventually you will be fighting hordes of enemies that number from “three or four” to “dozens” to “infinite if you don’t get the hell out of there.” I am not joking, you will get swarmed at regular intervals and the number of enemies increases as you progress through areas. You get one health elixir, like an estus flask, but enemies and crates do drop these at random, so you’re not obligated to return to the beginning to recharge it.
So you’re probably thinking “it sounds like you have to level up these abilities,” and you’re right. Every time you die, you get returned to the Sanctuary and get ye olde Skill Tree, which looks an awful lot like the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. We’ve all seen these things before in other games, most likely. Because this is riffing on Lovecraft, you will initially get your abilities and perks from the Shining Trapazohedron, who is basically a really catty teenager who likes to sneer at everyone with its deep sinister voice. It’s what you get when the Elder Gods like to gossip about their neighbors. Because you play the game as a WoC (hell yeah) I see this as a deliberate slam on Lovecraft.
Anyway, you spend the shards you get from beating enemies and breaking stuff on stats, perks, etc.
But the Metroidvania element comes in as you beat both minibosses and regular bosses. That’s how you earn your movement (or sometimes combat) upgrades, e.g. the ever popular double jump. You also regularly unlock shortcuts inside each area or between areas as you progress.
I can’t stress enough how good the combat feels. It’s what single-handedly won me over because initially, I was very afraid to play a difficult game with huge numbers of enemies in it. (yes, it’s because I have anxiety, I’m sorry
) Standing still and button mashing is like the worst way you could play this game. Dodging is great for emergencies but you really want to at least be running back and forth and jumping to dodge basic enemy attacks. The controls are very responsive and there’s very little lag, which is crucial for a game where one mistake could result in your entire lifebar being drained in seconds by lasers, exploding satellites, and hordes of weird-ass monsters. In particular, you want to start learning air combos, because you can attack up, down, forward or back, and it’s pretty intuitive to chain these attacks. You can unleash some serious hurt on even boss enemies once you start to get good at this. I was able to take off a third of the first boss’s health with one air combo, which won me the fight and saved me from dying and having to do it again. The up-slash in particular is good, because it carries you up vertically a little bit (which can also be used for sequence breaks and finding hidden items). You can reach enemies that are above you or move out of the way of another attack while setting something else up to be smacked in the face mid-air.
Anyway that’s a lot of words for a game I haven’t even beaten yet! So far I think it hits the sweet spot of “high but manageable difficulty,” because death is never a penalty when it gives you an opportunity to level up a bit every time.