New this update
Ongoing game
Beaten
100% Complete!
Currently Playing
- Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (PSP)
- Final Fantasy XIV (PC)
Recently Beaten
- Layton's Mystery Journey (Android)
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps (PC)
- Human Resource Machine (PC)
- Emily is Away (PC)
- A Mortician's Tale (PC)
★☆★☆★
I didn't wanna update this thread too often but jeez, I went a bit crazy with beating games the past little while and I have so many to talk about!!!
★☆★☆★
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
The theme for March's game challenge was platformer, so it was the perfect time to finally pick up Ori and the Will of the Wisps! The first Ori game is one of my favourite games of all time. Everything about it was just so, so good—the gameplay, the game design, the music, the visuals, everything! I'm usually really bad at platformers, which makes me hesitant to give them a shot, but I'm glad I made an exception for Ori and after finally being able to afford the sequel last month, I was glad to be able to make time for it so soon!
...And it was so worth it!!! Honestly, I just loved this game to bits again. It's gorgeous, the music is great, and it was every bit as fun to play as its predecessor. It had a fair few QoL changes from the first one (such as being able to teleport to shrines from any safe zone on the map instead of just from other shrines) and the battles felt a little more fleshed out than I remember them being in the first one. The challenges in the game were frustrating sometimes, but never in such a way that I felt they were impossible to achieve. Usually I just needed to check my skills and try a different approach. That's something I appreciated about the boss fights, too. I would often start them out feeling a bit annoyed because none of it made sense and I felt like I was fumbling too much, but so quickly I'd figure it out and by the time I finally cleared the boss, I'd have a very clear idea of how to do everything. (Although sometimes I did just have to brute force it a bit, too. I never promised to be good at these kinds of games...!)
I actually really liked how most of the game was kind of just a rehash of the original. The original was just so well-designed that I felt like they perfected it and they didn't need to give me a totally new game with different platforming skills, they just needed to give me more of what I loved and that's exactly what they did. It's been too long since the first one for me to remember if every single thing was included in the sequel or even specifics of what was new and what wasn't, but it felt like coming home. The progression of picking up your new skills, going back along the map to apply them in old areas, the fluidity of how they slot into your repertoire each time you get something new... everything was just perfect. Don't mess with the formula if it works.
I suppose maybe my one complaint about the game is it didn't have any particular "aaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!" moments like in the first game. Specifically, the final chase segment in the Ginso Tree in the first one was the defining moment of the game for me. And one of my favourite parts of any game
ever. I truly think it's a masterpiece in design, the way the music is perfectly timed to your actions and you have almost a rhythmic challenge, trying to stay ahead of the water gushing forth as you jump and fling your way upward. Most of the bosses in this game had a short little chase segment, and once again when you bring the clean water back to this forest, there's a chase sequence-only boss to greet you, but it just... didn't feel the same at any point in this game. The chases were too short, or too segmented, or just... I dunno. They couldn't live up to that one. And I mean, it would have been an extremely tall task to do that, but I still kind of hoped it would.
I didn't get all the achievements, so I suppose this might be a false double-check, since by some standards I didn't 100% the game, but all of the achievements were for challenge modes and I just... wasn't interested in that. I got all the collectibles, upgraded every skill, did every sidequest, and that's enough for me. I know I wouldn't enjoy trying to challenge myself in a platformer so I simply won't push myself to. The game is done and I've 100%'d what matters, so I'm gonna say it counts.
Please please please play these games, everyone. They are so worth it.
★☆★☆★
Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy
Hoo, boy, where to start. First up: I guess this game is alright. It largely has the same amount of polish that I'd expect from a Layton game. The puzzles are fun, examining the maps to find all the hidden things is fun, the character designs are top notch as usual. But it's just... not an enjoyable game overall. I had a lot of gripes and I want to whine about them.
First up: the case writing. The game is divided into 12 cases and, being a mobile game first and foremost, they're meant to be very digestible in a short amount of time, so each case only lasts for maybe 20 minutes of gameplay. And that's fine, except that it felt like they didn't actually know how to write an episodic game to the same standard as the previous titles in the series. The way each case worked is Katrielle explores around and each time she makes some progress on her case, she gets a "clue" or bit of "inspiration". Once you've collected all the clues, you have the option to solve the case and finish up the episode. It's a perfectly good system in theory, but in practice? Nearly every time, there are one or two clues that are so obvious they blow the case wide open early on in the investigation, leaving you to arbitrarily explore the rest of the chapter for often unrelated clues that don't at all factor in to the final twist. It's not satisfying at all. Once or twice, none of the clues even make SENSE and the logical leap that Katrielle makes in the fancy anime cutscene takes the player by surprise, too, and not even in a good way.
Speaking of Katrielle, I found her largely unlikeable and it made the game hard to keep playing. It's frustrating, because I think with a different cast she could be a lot better. But the combination of her and Ernest is just so unfortunate. She flits between knowing exactly how much she's leading him on/using him and being totally innocent/naive about the whole thing based on the tone the writers wanted for a given scene and it's just annoying. I'm not a fan of Ernest either, but God, the guy has no personality beyond simping for her. The dude needs to move on and the game doesn't give us a good reason for why he sticks around beyond his stupid crush. (And I've got a further bone to pick with him, given the twist at the end, but this will be way too long if I focus on everyone.)
That said, one thing I tried really hard to do while playing was to pull back a bit to try to figure out why I found Katrielle so frustrating. Did I genuinely dislike her character? Or was I subconsciously comparing her to Professor Layton as the face of the series every time she speaks? Or is it a combination of the two, disliking her character as she's presented and also feeling like it smears Layton as a character? Because I struggle somewhat to believe the "perfect gentleman" would raise such a brat. But then... Maybe it's
because he was always off solving cases and raising other kids that she grew up the way she did, wanting to make a name for herself rather than relying on his reputation?? I'm definitely overthinking it all, of course, but I don't like it when I dislike female leads and always worry a big part of it is some sort of internalized misogyny, because I've struggled a lot with that in the past. But the more the game went on, and especially with that one case where she gets framed for murder and just pointlessly runs away from the cops before deciding to go back for no reason at all was where I just gave up trying to find a reason to appreciate her and just let myself be annoyed.
Anyway, all that aside, I did feel like the game was worth playing. This was my second time playing it—the first time I played was shortly after it came out, so I didn't actually get to experience all the Daily Puzzles because I stopped checking and downloading them after a certain point. So this time I got to 100% the game for real. The Daily Puzzles were largely good. Some were great fun and some were actually terrible and the rest were mostly in between. A lot were just tedious to go through in a short amount of time but I can't fault them for it because it's meant to be spread out over a year, ahaha. The game had the usual bonus puzzles that unlock as you progress. I really liked the meals one, where you had to find the "ideal meal" for a handful of NPCs. I wish that it was possible to actually complete it as you were going through, but as before I found it best to just beat the whole game and then go do the challenge because then you had access to all the dishes and could, you know, build the meals as the NPCs ask? The other games were kinda fun but not very notable.
The DLC for the game is entirely fashion-based, just a bunch of outfits for Katrielle that you can change on the fly as you play. They're all like $3-4 and none of them are particularly good. There's only one other costume included with the game, the fancy one you get during the theatre chapter, and the whole thing just feels odd, especially since they hinged a great deal of Katrielle's personality on fashion and liking to buy new things. Shouldn't more outfits be included then? They didn't even make Katrielle likeable, why would I pay them to encourage her hobbies? I think there's also a bit of DLC in the form of decorating the office but... wow, the options were so unfortunate. Almost nothing looks good together, even if you unlock everything. It was just a weird feature to include if they were gonna give you so little choice in decorations. (I really only mention it because I
love decoration games and including it in such a half-assed way just felt like an insult to me personally, ahaha...)
★☆★☆★
Emily is Away
I was hesitant to even add this to my list because the game was only like 30 minutes long, but I've decided I will not discriminate based on length and I wouldn't mind playing more indie games this year. If it feels like I'm cheating on my 20 game challenge (and it already does), I'll just bump it up throughout the year. :)
Anyway! This game was... okay. Someone recommended it to me a year or two ago, although I simply do not remember who it was. I found it kind of cute at first. It's a little story about two friends in high school who drift apart and never quite manage to romantically connect with each other, despite mutual feelings. The whole thing plays out in an AIM window, one conversation per year. I thought that was actually a clever little way to give the story, and although I wasn't a heavy user of AIM back in the day, it still felt really nostalgic hearing the noises and setting a low res avatar and picking my font and background colours... but that's maybe where my enjoyment stopped, lol. I was not at all surprised to find the game was written by a guy, because the whole thing just... felt like it. Although the randomized names at the start included both guys and girls and the game was pretty inclusive of orientation (letting you ultimately choose whether you were dating a guy, a girl, or neither), the writing was just... so awkward, if you imagined your character as girl. To be fair, it was awkward even if you were a guy and I'm pretty sure it's a story of being more or less friendzoned by your manic pixie dream girl, although maybe not quite that extreme.
Both you and Emily, the titular character, are really unlikable and a lot of the dialogue options were just painful to pick. I played through the game twice, since it was so short, and the second time I tried to pick totally different options and was still just vaguely upset at how it all turned out. My first playthrough, after Emily is dumped by her mildly abusive (??) boyfriend, I invited her to visit me at university in another city and she accepted, and then the next year she got mad at me for not having made a move when she was there, even though in my head I was like, wow, she is going through a rough breakup, obviously I shouldn't try to aim my character into a rebound situation with her or take advantage (and had even set clear boundaries that she was visiting "as a friend" before she came). She laments it and by then it's too late, she's back with the asshole boyfriend and the game ends. So the next time I played my cards differently and while I didn't make a move, I also didn't set any boundaries. The next year, turns out we didn't do anything but she also accused my character of taking advantage of her when she was vulnerable and that soured me so much on the game I almost didn't even finish it. But it ends the same way regardless.
I did not do any more playthroughs to see how any of the other dialogue branches panned out, just sub in different friends or acquaintances), so I'm not marking it complete, even though I suspect the story is exactly the same no matter what you pick. There's a paid sequel, where you navigate more of a MySpace era site and it's more dating sim-y, but I didn't see anything good about it from people who felt largely the same way I did about this game, so I am not interested.
★☆★☆★
Human Resource Machine
I didn't really know what to expect when I randomly started this game in my Steam library the other day, but it certainly wasn't old Computer Science homework, I can tell you that much. I really liked some of this developer's other games, particularly World of Goo, so I installed this on a whim and beat it all in a day.
It's basically a game that tricks you into writing assembly code. I nearly failed a class on this in university but I distinctly remember doing assignments that had some of these same kinds of problems, so it was almost nostalgic to go back and without the oppressive nature of school hanging over me, I actually had a lot more fun with this than I expected once I realized what it was. It was also deeply satisfying to naturally manage the speed and size challenges (for quickest execution and fewest lines of code respectively) for most of the earlier levels without any extra effort. For later levels, I gave up on trying to do both challenges pretty quickly, but I did still try not to move on unless I could manage at least one of the two challenges. I still haven't done all the bonus levels, but I think I'd like to go back to them one day.
One thing I think could have been a bit better is... either lose the story segment or flesh it out just a little bit more. It was just kinda weird having there be a whole robot/AI takeover and then for there not to be a whole lot done with it...? It feels weird even typing this out lol.
I'd also love to get my hands on the sequel next time there's a Steam sale. The one has multi-processors! It'll be just like my Operating Systems class but more fun!
★☆★☆★
A Mortician's Tale
Continuing on with the "games so short, it feels like cheating to add them to my beaten list", I finally got around to A Mortician's Tale today! I'd avoided it for many years because every review seemed to mention that while the game was great and thoughtful, the price tag was too high for how much game you get and given it was always around $15 for an hour of gameplay... I passed on it. Until a few months ago I found it in my Humble Bundle downloads. I guess I bought a bundle that included it once and then totally forgot about it. Oops! I downloaded it and forgot about it again, until I found it the other day while looking for something in my downloads folder.
I'm glad I played this game, but reviewers were right: it's disappointingly short. Basically you start out as a mortician right out of university, hired by a little mom and pop funeral home. Each day of gameplay, you start by checking your emails, reading thoughtful newsletters (about death, the grieving process, and how to approach that as a worker in a funeral home), and slowly uncovering the plot which is that your funeral home just can't keep up with the more corporate ones that push expensive plans on people. Then, you accept your job for the day which is either embalming someone or cremating them and then attending the funeral briefly to pay your respects. Rinse and repeat, except there are really only like 10 people tops, so there's not a lot to do. It holds your hand every single time, even though the steps for either task are quite simple.
I think this game could have been improved even a little if there were more choices to make. Spoilers ahoy, but eventually you get bought out by a company that runs dozens of funeral homes and you have to follow their strict corporate policies even if it goes against your own beliefs, especially those instilled in you by the previous owner and the newsletters you get. I think there would be a bit more content if you had to choose between following their rules or respecting the wishes of a grieving family and stretching that out a bit more instead of going for the somewhat unrealistic ending it stopped at. Still, it was a lovely little game and I enjoyed my time with it. I really liked the newsletters in particular, because they had a lot of thoughtful things to say and I think I'll remember their contents for a long time to come, which I imagine was kind of the point of the game anyway. :)
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