I took a pause from PC (and most of sites I have done presence on, you could call it a digital detox), so I'm dumping all of my gaming achievements for the month in this post. It was pretty good month. I crossed off another AAA game from the last year - Ghostwire: Tokyo, that ended up just like I imagined it - good premise and visuals completely buried under the mediocre gameplay mechanics that felt like a checklist of stuff to include because it's in popular AAA games. I also played Pizza Tower, which was fun nostalgia ride and homage to games I've never played. On the other hand, I've played original Advance Wars, so Advance Wars remake just scratched another itch and nostalgia feeling. To wrap up the month, I played yet another Silent Hill game. Still better than Silent Hill 4. But not by much. And at the total end of the month, I also managed to beat Master Detective Archives: Raincode. I didn't expect to beat it this month, but it was good alternative for a book, while I was lying in bed. Now, let's take a proper look at these games...
Pizza Tower
Pizza Tower is a game with no tower made out of pizza. That's called false advertising. I haven't felt so betrayed ever since I was told There Is No Game and it became my personal best game of that year.
Pizza Tower is homage to Warioland. Or at least that's what I'm told. I never played Warioland. I was worried the game won't have the same effect on me because I had no attachmen to Warioland, but I had a blast. It actually reminded me of a different game - Jazz Jackrabbit 2. And that's my favourite game.
The art style is very Jazz-like. It looks like it was made in Paint and I love it. The wacky expressions are right from the Jazz, but made more... expressive? What I mean is they convey more emotions that's just rage or fright. I love the stages. They all have distinct theme and such a dream-like feel to them. I would mind if there were more stages per floor. I love how the game managed to take somewhat ordinary locations, turn them in fun stages, put references to other games and media and keep the overall theme of pizza in all of them.
Given that all trailers were about speed and its even one of the first thing you're taught in the tutorial, I thought I'm supposed to move fast and that there is a timer not just for running back from the end to the start, but for the whole level and it just reveal itself after you destroy the stone guy. Because of this, I cleared the whole first floor except for the bossfight just by running into everything. I also barely explored these stages, yet I managed to get almost all jailed vegetable, or whatever that was. I think it was reference of the original Rayman game, because you collect caged creatures (in the similar fashion) there too. And so, I got to the first boss like this. And actually made it into his second phase after few tries. But I was wondering if I'm doing something wrong. This is the first boss afterall and I can barely hit him. I suddenly remembered there was also a button to attack. So I tried it. And it worked! The impossible boss suddenly became easy. And my entire view of the game changed. I can go slow. What a revolutionary idea!
Ever since then, I spent more time in each stage, now not just blindly running forward, but actually exploring it. But there is one mechanic that I think was a little bit overdone. Pretty much every stage had its own gimmick. And most of them are really simple and barely flashed out. There are few that appear in multiple stages and these are the ones with the most depth in them. Each stage uses them a little bit differently. Some gimmicks look great visually, like the ones, which turns the main character in pizza in some way. One as dough, one as pizza box... They are fun. But for each fun one, there is one that is annoying to control (which is an achievement in a game that uses 3 keys on a keyboard), has boring puzzles or is just not that great as the rest.
I already spoke about the first boss a little bit, but there is a weird curve when it comes to bosses. The first one has the most HP, maybe except for the final bossfight, but only because that bossfight has a lot more phases. Each consensual boss has less HP and arguably easier attacks. It also feels like their movesets repeat. Most of them has similar attacks. But each fight takes place in the same small arena, so there probably isn't many options for possible attacks.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this game and enjoyed the nostalgia ride it offered. 8/10.
Advance Wars
If one game shouts Game Boy Advance era for me, it's Advance Wars. I love this series. But I don't think I ever finished the original as a kid, despite playing it for years. And I'm not sure if I ever played the sequel before this remake. Probably yes, because I remember some characters exclusive only to the second game, but I'm not sure. So I was looking forward this remake and was happy when it got finally released and was getting positive ratings. As you can probably imagine, while I'm always trying to look at games I play critically and from all perspectives, my thoughts on Advance Wars will be heavily biased, because I love the game and while I can try, I don't think I can look at it objectively.
Advance Wars scratches the itch Fire Emblem couldn't for a long time. Actually, to compare it to with more fitting game, Advance Wars is the game Wargroove desperately wants to be, but can't. I don't think I've talked about Wargroove in this thread, but it's basically just a bad attempt at making Advance Wars without understanding what makes Advance Wars such a gem. And it got a sequel just released. Which is kinda sad.
What makes Advance Wars genius, and what I found really lacking in FE: Engage, are maps. Every single tile has a meaning for it. They are all the exact distance from each other as they need to be. They all play a crucial role in all maps. For example, in the first game, there is a mission, where you have to survive for a set amount of turns. You start on a small island with only a bridge connecting it to the rest of the map, which is all controlled by your opponent. Not only you can block the bridge with your tanks and shoot at your opponent using your rockets, but after being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemy units, you can use your lander to hide among reefs in the water. And every reefs is far just enough for you to hide there. During another mission in the second game, you have to save your city. To get to it, you have to get through forest that is swarming with enemies and around huge cannons that are ready to destroy any unit they see. Once again, you have to use terrain to your advantage. And once again, forest tiles are put together in a way that you have to calculate and take risks, because sometimes your units with be exposed to the cannons. In one of my favourite maps, you have to destroy another bunch of these annoying cannons. You start with few battleships that can take care of these cannons, but they have to get to them first. There is a small canal going there, but it's full of enemies, so you have to clear it first. And when you get to the cannons, you see reefs in which you can hide. But these reefs are too far and you can't shoot at cannons. There are also enemy rocket launchers hidden around their cannons, meaning you have a hard time getting out of the reefs and attacking. Meaning you have to build a ground force too to have a chance to destroy these cannons. All while being on soft timer because your battleships have limited fuel that gets used every turn. And these are just few example of great map design in these two games.
One thing I wasn't really a fan of was that in the back half of the second game, each mission took way too long to beat. There was one that took me over two and a half hours to beat. And never during this time I felt like I was going to lose. It was just a slow burn that couldn't end fast enough. I also feel like some maps reused a lot of ideas from previous maps and barely build up on them. While I loved maps with clutches on tight bridges or narrow spaces, for a while this was all some maps had to offer. And there final two maps, which are suppose to be a grand finale were a huge letdown. One of them is just annoying to deal with, since the whole map par your base is under a threat of cannons and the final map doesn't really feel like the ultimate showdown. If anything, Great Naval Battle, a third mission from the end, felt more like a final showdown with the forces of Black Hole. But it might also be because towards the end, I started utilising Bombers more. Bombers proved to be too powerful for maps with limited number of anti-air units and they made the final mission trivial, since I basically avoided all the fighting and just flew and destroyed the mission's objective with my bombers before my opponent could react.
I think the story was really poorly executed and it felt like I'm missing some cutscenes or dialogues, especially in the first game, because suddenly I went from protecting myself from blue nation to attacking yellow guys for no reason. I had no idea what happened. And then I was attackig green folks. Only to join together out of the blue to fight Black Hole. Then the final villain just disappears and the game ends. There was like one line of a dialogue that tried explaining any of it. The story in the second game is a lot better, but it's still not something extraordinary.
I also like the fact that the devs kept original CO powers in the first game, leaving some of them OP and then using both regular and special CO powers for the sequel. This way, you could get a good look at some powers and enjoy their overpowerenes, before they got nerfed in the sequel. Otherwise, I think the characters were somewhat balanced, but some were simply better than the others. While I like and enjoyed Sensei's ability, it wasn't that strong as some others, for example. I'm looking at you, Eagle.
I also quite enjoyed the art style and visuals of the game. They are in a contrast with the dark reality of the war, but I think the are fine. I like that each faction had different design of each unit, but it made some hard to identify. For example I had a hard time telling Black Hole's tank and recon apart.
Overall, I'm glad this series is getting the love and attention it deserves. I'm looking forward new entries. 9.5/10.
Ghostwire: Tokyo
I remember when the first trailer for Ghostwire dropped. It was so intriguing! People are disappearing around Tokyo and these weird monsters based on Japanese folklore are appearing all around the city. I remember that it was marketed as a mystery game, where you slowly discover the truth. That all with original battle system, in which your character can cast magic with their hand. Then the final product dropped and everyone quickly forgot about it. Like the game got released and it was gone in less than week. Why was that?
The game has really cool visuals. The city of Tokyo looks amazing. There are so many details in each corner, the lighting is great and gives a whole game an eerie atmosphere, which is only complemented by the creepy monsters. Faceless Slenderman-like creatures, headless students, ghosts... They look great. One of my favourite gaming moments this year must be my first encounter of a Demon Parade. It's an event you can encounter randomly and is a huge parade of these monsters as they are hidden in a fog, so you can barely make out their outlines, while you hear an ominous, but cheerful music following them. There are Yokai you can interact with and they all look great. Your magic is colourful and has cool particle effects. Visually, this game is stunning. You can see someone put their soul in making this world.
But that's only one face of this game. Because hidden under this glitter is... very mediocre game. It feels like someone put together a list of popular gaming mechanics and put them in this game without really flashing any of them. Or thinking if they even fit this game.
Grappling hook? CHECK
Parkour? CHECK
Empty open-world? CHECK
Useless collectibles? CHECK
Towers that reveal your map? CHECK
Forced stealth sections? CHECK
Skill-tree? CHECK
And there is a lot more. The game has a really huge urgency. Like you're late to stop the villain right at the start of the game and have merely few hours, if even that, to stop him, before he completely finishes his plan. So you know what this game apparently needs? Side missions! And not only they are highlighted on your map, but each time a new one appears, the game specifically shows it to you. While these missions are short, it doesn't make sense for the main character to stop and hunt for a kappa, play hide and seek with souls or investigate a haunted house. They are on strict time limit and even have a personal stakes in it. And during the story cutscenes, they are restless and all they want to do is to save their sister.
Speaking of the main character, this is the only characteristic he'll get during the whole game. He has almost no other emotions or motivations. He has no life outside the main plot of the game. It's like he don't even exists outside the main plot of the game. He just popped in the existence with the only goal to save his sister and after the credit scene, he'll disappear again. He also has a spirit, a companion, tied to him at the start of the game. This spirit is a former paranormal cop and while he has a little bit of personality and motivations to do what he does, he's also mostly just blank slate. An inconsistent slate. In one cutscene he says that he didn't care about civilian casualties, but not even a minute later, he talks about how you must save every single soul you encounter.
And the game is full of these inconsistencies. For example the souls you can gather during your journey. I'm okay with you using just a (holy) paper to suck them in and then send them over the telephone outside the city so someone can resurrect them. But why? The game tells you these souls are important for the main villain's plan. But he made these souls. He is literally the reason they all died. Why can't he just collect them using his magic? Maybe they need to go willingly? That's why he has all these broadcasts over the city telling the souls to go to him. Well, no, because we see him using some kind of cubic prison to trap souls. So maybe he can only do it to nearby souls? Well, no, because in the intro, he traps every souls in the area at once. So maybe that's why he's using all these monsters? To gather up all the souls? Well, no, because they are eating away these souls. The more you think about it, the less the plan makes sense.
And it all takes plummets in the middle of the game. Last 3 chapters don't feel completed. Chapter 4 is about getting a supernatural motorcycle oil (no, I'm not kidding) and a motor for your supernatural motorcycle to get to the final location. The quest have you literally going to 3 locations and getting the stuff there. But every interaction is replaced by the screen going black and playing a sound effect. Which is not something that would happen in previous chapters and it's very noticeable. Chapter 5 is about going through an empty linear path and killing 2 bosses. The final chapter is about going through an empty linear path and killing the final boss. They are less than an hour long and have literally nothing in them except for that one linear path.
Bosses are basic and also feel unfinished. The final boss uses the same moveset that one previous boss used. They are all about shooting and destroying masks on their bodies. And for some reason, each boss turns into a monster. Some of them have cool design, but that's pretty much all you can say about the whole game.
Actually... Overall, the game has really cool visuals and some fun ideas, but the execution and the badly implemented inclusion of some gaming mechanics pull this game down tremendously. 5/10.
Silent Hill: Homecoming
I started playing Silent Hill games 2 years ago. I love the original trilogy and had fun with Origins. I wasn't a huge fan of Silent Hill 4, because while it had some great ideas, it didn't quite stick the landing. I much more prefer the lore of SH1, 3 and Origins than SH2, because I like the cultists twist on it, rather than the town is evil because it was build on an indian burial site. So I wasn't that happy with Homecoming going with SH2 lore. It also tried to connect this lore with SH1, SH3 and Origins.
It did pretty good job with it. SH2 lore allowed for monsters to appear in locations outside Silent Hill without forcing Heather to be there, while also tying the story to the SH cult. Silent Hill also makes an appearance, but only for a short amount of time. I like the implication that the main character meets Pyramid Head, but it doesn't care about him, because it isn't hunting him, instead it's (probably) hunting the protagonist of SH2. On the other hand, Shepherd's Glen is not that flashed out like Silent Hill and devs kept everything really grounded, so it never got that crazy like in SH2. Or in any other SH game.
The battle system was again revamped and it's once again not good. You can now dodge attacks and enemies are more prone to block your attacks. But your attacks sometimes doesn't register, enemies sometimes unleash a series of quick unblockable and undodgeable attacks that will cut your HP in half, some enemies are small so some of your attacks can't hit them and it just feel clunky and unoptimised. Fighting with enemies gets boring quickly. On the other hand there are fewer enemies, but most of them are mandatory to beat. Which is a shame in a series, where you could avoid most of the fighting.
Story was a nice surprise. I don't think it can match the original trilogy, but wasn't as awful as I expected and had some nice moments. Especially towards the end. I was surprised by how much I liked the revelation at the end of the game.
The biggest downside is the technical state of the game. PC version is almost unplayable and is crashing or lagging even with fan-made patches. But even patched, the gameplay is inferior to the original trilogy. It's more linear, with most doors in each location locked, there are almost no "waste your ammo/life for nothing" rooms, which were fun to encounter in the original trilogy, puzzles are all way too similar - find X pieces of an item and then put them somewhere in the correct order.
Overall, it was surprisingly okay addition to the Silent Hill games, but nothing that I would return to or even think as often as about the original trilogy. 6/10.
Master Detective Archives: Raincode
A completely new IP on Switch that promised a detective mystery set in a city, where it never stops raining, and full of supernatural occurrences? Yep, sounds interesting.
It was made by the same people that made Danganropa, which is a series that I never played nor I know much about it. I know about the weird bear that puts students on deadly trials, but that was pretty much where my knowledge ends. So I wasn't sure what I'm getting into, but was looking forward to it. The game puts you in shoes of a amnesiac detective, who solves crimes with the help of a Shinigami.
The gameplay is divided into two sections. First one takes place in the tall world and have you gather clues about your current case. The second then takes place in a Mystery Labyrinth, a supernatural manifestation of the case, where you slowly put all pieces together and find the culprit. And it all sounds great on the paper. But there are two huge problems with the execution.
First, the tutorial, which took me more than 3 hours to complete, introduces some mechanics and ideas that never makes an appearance again, or show up once or twice during the rest of the game. The tutorial also makes a big deal about going around the labyrinth and finding dead ends. It even demonstrate to you that you can be wrong in your deductions, run in the dead end and having to rethink your steps. Which never happens. The labyrinth, as the name might make you believe, is no labyrinth at all. It's just a straight linear path, where you can't go wrong. Even when you try, the game will just stops you. And when you run in the dead end, it's because the game wanted you to run into it. There are few moments, when you're given a question and multiple choices of answers. All of them are wrong and will result in the dead end. And only when you try all of them, you are allowed to continue on the right path.
Then, there are mini-games in the Mystery Labyrinth, which got boring and annoying even during the tutorial. There is a deathmatch against over-designed villains of each case, which have you slashing their wrong deductions and lies using your clues. And it is fine, but sometimes feel like it's forced. Like you slash one lie and the deathmatch ends and the story continues, only for another deathmatch to appear soon, also with just one lie to slash. Sometimes, you are given enough clues to slash different lie, but because it's not a time for that lie yet, the game will tell you it's wrong and you have to slash different lie using different clue. Then, there is a mini-game, in which Shinigami, dressed only in revealing swimsuit, jumps in a barrel and you have to charge her by finding a word using the letters on the barrel. Yeah, it's as weird as it sounds. And since you can also put together different words that could fit the requirements from given letters... The rest of the mini-games could be summarised as "QTE with repeating animations".
The other problem is Shinigami herself. She's just such a weird character to have in a game like this. While the rest of the world is dark, grim and take itself seriously, Shinigami feels like she's a failed concept for a character from a bad Harem anime. Her dialogue can be divided into two categories. First, it's sexually inappropriate comments about other characters, the second is her insulting other characters for no reason. She is also sexualized so much. As I mentioned, she just randomly gets almost naked in one mini-game for no reason. Most of her solo animations are just a fanservicr She's also someone who has one of the worst dialogues in the game, for example "I'm so horny for mysteries". It's awful character, but luckily, she gets a little bit better as the game progress. But she's not the only bad character. To be honest, I didn't really like any of the main cast. They all were one-dimensional and usually repeated same few lines over and over again.
The pacing all over the place. As I said, a tutorial, which was really linear experience, was way too long. The dialogues are not really helping it. Most of it is so basic and don't give you any meaningful information. What I find funny is that the game is aware of its pacing issues and let's you fast forward in most dialogues and cutscenes. It knows it's a slog! But it gives you one of the worst solutions for it, because while fastforwarding some long passage in Mystery Labyrinth, you'll also accidentally skip some important dialogue.
The pacing have a huge negative effect on the overall experience and story. I really like the writing and each mystery. But they drag and drag and suddenly you've been gassing for an hour and moved the story only for like five seconds. Also some chapters felt like a filler. Like you get some story exposition at the start of the chapter, then solve crime that had nothing to do with it, and then you get some more exposition at the end of the chapter. Chapter 1 through 3 has nothing to do with the overall story. You are introduced to some locations and people, but they won't matter in the main story. They feel like they could have been a great side quests, but for some reason, they are in the main story. But it doesn't mean I didn't like them. I think especially 2nd chapter is one of the best. I love that it tackles interesting morale dilemma for the main character. His powers will inevitable kill the culprit, but Chapter 2 makes you question if that's the right outcome. Well, during the story, you're the only one who knows what is happening, everyone else will just see someone die without any reason, so...
It's only in Chapter 4, when the "main" story really starts and you feel like you're really progressing and solving the main mystery. And the takes all the way to Chapter 5 for the game to throw everything it has at you. It drops all the illusion of you being free to investigate how you want and puts you on one hell of a ride. Suddenly, it turns into a horror story and finally you feel like the stakes are high. It serves you completely linear, but awesome story. And it even made Mystery Labyrinth fun again. While I could solve most of the cases before even entering Mystery Labyrinth or shortly after, I was completely dumbfounded by the final twists.
Overall, I think if the game was trimmed and included half the chapters and dialogues, it would be really great detective mystery story. Especially the middle section of the game is one huge filler that slowly burns enjoyment out of the game. But the rest of the story is fun and engaging experience. 7.5/10.
