[Game Journal] gimmegaming 2024

[gimmepie]

Gimmegaming 2024​

With the fifth Game-Along well and truly underway, it's probably about time I got this year's gaming journal up-and-running. Here I'll be keep track of the games I complete throughout 2024 and sharing my thoughts and feelings about them.

Unlike previous entries though, I'm only going to add entries for games as I finish them. It started to get to be a bit of a hassle to manufacture entries for each play session after a while, especially for games that didn't have a lot to talk about. If you want to see my journal for last year, here's a link.

Goal: Complete fifteen games
Completed: 6/15
Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIV, Minecraft, Baldur's Gate 3 (allegedly), Genshin Impact

Inside

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet DLC - Teal Mask, Indigo Disc and Mochi Mayhem

Thief

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

 

[gimmepie]

Inside

Inside is a disturbing puzzle-platformer brought to us by the same lunatics that came up with the idea for Limbo. Although Inside goes much harder on it's more gruesome and bizarre horror elements than Limbo.

Narratively, you mostly have to work with what you see in Inside. There's a story implied but it's largely subtext and not much is really spelled out. The general gist is that you play as a young boy who is making his way through a place controlled by some sort of shady, militant organisation and trying to avoid capture. As you progress through various locales, you get to see more and more of the sick experimentation this organisation has been working on - various forms of highly unethical human and animal experiments involving mind control and body modification/mutation. It's never really stated why the boy is "free" or what drives him - unlike Limbo which at least makes it eventually clear you are searching for your sibling. Ultimately, the game leaves it up to you to come to your own conclusions for the most part. This frustrates me in a way, because I really would like answers about things. But even still, I admire the worldbuilding on display and skill with subtextual storytelling. But god damn I really want to know. I'd love to tell you more about the story, but it's something you really have to see for yourself o understand any of it. As much as any of it can be understood.

Gameplay-wise, the mechanics are very similar to Limbo. You have only really got three controls - move, interact and jump. However, those simple controls are used to move through a variety of different environments and complete a wide range of different puzzles. It's impressive how much Inside does with so little, much like Limbo. The puzzles were never overly difficult, but they did require some actual thinking to piece together sometimes - probably more so than with Limbo. There were also a lot of hidden things that could easily be missed that are needed to unlock the alternate ending and get all the achievements if you're into that.

Visually, as expected, Inside is stunning. Although it also uses faux-3D, or 2.5D if we're calling it that, it does look very different to Limbo as far as the aesthetic. It's less greyscale - even if the palette is still very muted, and the world is a lot more vibrant and visceral. Everything from the player to plants is a mot more detailed. It has a vibe that's less eerie as a result, but much gritter.

The sound design is also on point. There's not much to say for the minimalist OST other than it doing it's job, it's everything else that is really good. Not just the use of sound effects that you can feel in places, but the game knows when and how to use silence well also.

Over all, I had a good time with Inside. It's simple, fun and very compelling even if you have to figure out the story for yourself. Even though I would kill to have the devs explain the exact nature of everything to me. I don't think there is anything this game does poorly. It's pretty much impossible to talk critically of Inside without mentioning Limbo since they're made by the same people and cut from the same cloth - especially with how good Limbo is. Honestly though, I'd say Inside compares favourably to its predecessor.

Inside is a great game that I highly recommend. Be warned though, it is very gruesome and gets very messed up in places.

Writing: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Visuals: 8/10
Sound: 8/10
Total: 31/40

Note: This score is subject to change since I'm going to have to take a bit to process this one.

 

[gimmepie]

Pokemon Scarlet and Violent DLC - Teal Mask, Indigo Disk and Mochi Mayhem

I actually finished this a while back, but I might as well put an update for it here.

Going into the DLC, I had some concern. While there is no denying that the base game - especially prior to patching - had some very real technical difficulties and made some odd choices with how the open world was structured, I genuinely really liked how it handled its story and characters. So when I saw that the DLC largely focused on new characters, I was apprehensive. Now, I do wish the old gang got to be more involved in the DLC. That being said, Kieran and Carmine are solid characters and Kieran is a rival pretty different than any other we've had so far. I like that it's losing out to us that causes his downfall and it was cool to see him go through his whole character arc. Carmine was a little less interesting and didn't grow very much, but she was fun enough. The Blueberry E4 also didn't get a lot of spotlight but they were nice enough and I enjoyed Ogrepon's personality.

As far as the actual plot goes, I liked it overall. It was primarily centred around Kieran's arc which was fine, honestly. I enjoyed the story behind Ogrepon a lot and it was nice to see how the conclusion of the Indigo Disc brought us right back around to the mysteries of Area 0. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the narrative or characters as much as the base game, but I had a good time. It was also nice that to wrap things up they brought the Paldea Gang and DLC kids together, but it would have been nice to get to spend more on-screen time with them all rather than have most of their interaction happen off-screen.

Mechanically, I don't have any real complaints. Kitakami doesn't really up the difficulty overly much or do anything too wild outside of the boss battles, but it's a good time. The first part of the Indigo Disc at the academy is really fun though. The focus on double battles makes things different and opponents at Blueberry are both a little more challenging and also more strategic than is typical. I enjoyed that a lot. Similarly, the Terapagos boss fight wasn't exactly hard but the type changing mechanic was neat. It's aso very cool that it's quite easy to build new teams for each section of the game on top of being able to do that for the three routes in the base game. I realy enjoyed that about both the base game and the DLC.

Graphically I don't have much to say. There's not really any huge steps up or down compared to the base game. Although the additional parts of Area 0 are spectacular, I have to admit that. Audio-wise is much the same. There's a few standout tracks like the Loyal 3 and Terapagos boss music or Kieran's champion music although the overworlds weren't anything too amazing for the most part.

Over all, I d recommend the DLC. I know a lot of people had doubts about it - especially after the dodgy launch Scarlet and Violet had. I know that they aren't exactly cheap. The games aren't perfect. But they are a lot of fun and continue the recent trend towards more character-driven storytelling in the Pokemon games nicely. It's worth it.

Writing: 7/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Visuals: 6/10
Sound: 7/10
Total: 29/40

 

[gimmepie]

Thief

So, for this month's theme, I need to complete a stealth game. I didn't actually have a lot of options for this, but I had picked up Thief (2014) a while back and had been intrigued by the gritty Victorian setting and general vibe of the game.

Narratively, Thief actually ended up being a lot more supernatural than expected. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I definitely don't remember this being advertised. Truthfully though, the concept wasn't that bad even if the nature of Primal wasn't well-explained. The base plotline was simple and nothing special, but it wasn't exactly bad either and had a few neat moments. That being said though, it wasn't great either. The twists were mostly predictable and the characters were pretty flat.

Mechanically... I won't lie to you, it fell flat. Conceptually, while the stealth mechanic are pretty standard, they are still cool. I like the different options you can take towards how you play, the variety of tools at your disposal and the lockpicking mechanic. I'm less fond of how the game doesn't tell you which tools are essential to certain parts of the game, how some mechanics were almost never worthwhile or just the general jankiness of things. This is especially true playing on keyboard and mouse since there's about a million different inputs to keep track of. I wouldn't want to play with small hands. This wouldn't be an issue if you played with controller but despite claiming to have controller compatibility, the game did not actually recognise having a controller plugged in and forced me to stick to keyboard and mouse anyway. Apparently, this has been a problem with the game since launch and the devs just never fixed it.

Visually, guards and other enemies often glitched out and the characters themselves didn't have particularly inspired designs or quality models. It wasn't enough to make anyone's eyes bleed but even factoring in that the game is ten years old they don't look great. To its credit though, the games environments do look pretty good. The atmosphere was definitely there and the general design of locations wasn't original by any means, but enjoyable.

Audio-wise the music was barely there mostly until things got dramatic at which point it was decent. The sound design was hit-and-miss with some dubious volume levels in laces but some highlights too like with the vocalisations made by the freaks, as they're called. The voice acting was also bad to middling with no real standouts other than maybe Basso's VA. He wasn't exactly world-shatteringly good either, but stood out by comparison.

So, Thief. Do I recommend it? Ehhhhhhh. It's an okay game if you can get past its issues. I wouldn't suggest paying full price for it, but if you want to play a stealth game and it's on sale, it's hardly the worst game in existence either. However, for basically the same price you can also get Aragami which has similar design but looks better, has better sound design and voice acting and none of the jank. So... you know.

Writing: 4/10
Gameplay: 2/10
Visuals: 5/10
Sound: 4/10
Total: 15/40

 

[gimmepie]

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

People have been bugging me to try Ace Attorney for years, so back in December when the first three games went on sale, I decided to grab them. Then, with April's theme being Visual Novels, I finally had a good reason to play it. I only did the base game, because of time constraints, but I'll likely try the rest at a later date.

So, story-wise, I was pleasantly surprised by Ace Attorney. I only really knew it was kind of zany going into it, so I did not anticipate how tight the writing was going into it. The cases and mysteries were generally really well thought out and the central characters ended up having a lot more depth to them than expected. Especially in the cases of Maya, Edgeworth and Gumshoe. Phoenix himself was comparatively a little more bland, but he was still an endearing protagonist. My only real frustrations with the storytelling were the semi-frequent Mia-ex-machina moments and the tendency for the game to sometimes force you to ignore evidence during a trial that would blow a false testimony wide open immediately in exchange for something that causes a more drawn out scenario. Although given the nature of the game, you could argue that the latter is more of a mechanical thing.

Speaking of mechanics, being a combination of visual novel and point-and-click game, there's not really a lot to say. It's mechanically very simple but that works for it. At no point did looking for clues in the point-and-click segments feel boring and the unique puzzle aspect that was the trials was really engaging. My only issue here is a minor one, but it did get a bit tedious to navigate between the various locations since you often had to click your way through several scenes to get to where you actually wanted to go. Hardly the end of the world, but I do hope later games improve the travel aspect.

Visually I haven't got a lot to say about things. The character designs are iconic for a reason, admittedly. However, the court backdrop and the various scenes elsewhere are pretty average. Not bad. The work is quality. But they don't have anything that makes them particularly standout. The music however, is wild. The music does not need to go as hard as it does. It's dynamic, intense, engaging and often emotional. What the fuck? Did nobody tell the composer they were working on a game with characters called Frank Sahwit, Lotta Hart and Will Powers. The music is ridiculously good.

So, to wrap this one up, I had a great time with this game. I was rushing through it a bit by the end because of time constraints, but I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and story - getting much more invested than I thought I would and the soundtrack slaps disproportionately hard. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a great game and I'm looking forward to trying more of the franchise.

Writing: 8/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Visuals: 5/10
Sound: 9/10
Total: 29/40

 

[bobandbill]

Was interested to see what you thought of it! Do play the others when you have the time imo. Agreed that sometimes there are parts you feel should be right to present certain evidence, but I would also put it down to mechanics to an extent.

Visuals... idk how the Switch version compares too much but it was originally a GBA title I suppose! The later games move to a more 3D style. And agreed, the music is great, and remains consistently good (but some games do have stronger OSTs than others I feel).

 

[gimmepie]

Was interested to see what you thought of it! Do play the others when you have the time imo. Agreed that sometimes there are parts you feel should be right to present certain evidence, but I would also put it down to mechanics to an extent.

Visuals... idk how the Switch version compares too much but it was originally a GBA title I suppose! The later games move to a more 3D style. And agreed, the music is great, and remains consistently good (but some games do have stronger OSTs than others I feel).

I played on Steam not Switch, but I think they're probably about the same. How do you feel about the more 3D style compared to the original?

 

[bobandbill]

Ah, fair.

3D model style is fine - I think the second game that had it did a better job using it. I also played them on the 3DS though, so a) smaller screen and b) if I wanted I could use the 3D effect. Still nothing amazing, but it's also just not a focus of the series, sans maybe some animations of characters being standout moments.

I haven't played TGAA games though, so not sure how it comes across there.

 

[Cherrim]

I think the visual updates of the remasters, while necessary given that the originals were pixel art made for a 240x160 resolution are fine but... they lost a lot of the charm in the upscale/redrawing of all the sprites and backgrounds. :') Personally I think the later 3D titles landed pretty well given they had to take the exaggerated several-frame pixel art characters and make them work in a smoother 3D version, but I do also think it lacks a bit of the charm that the pixel art had.

Although TGAA was much better imo because they could design for 3D from the start rather than having to also deal with the sort of uncanny valley you get when trying to appeal to people who only knew a set of characters in 2D before the switch to 3D models.