[Game Journal] gimmegaming 2025

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gimmepie

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    Gimmegaming 2025​


    With another year, another Game-Along and another Gaming Challenge; it's time for a new Gaming Journal. Below I'll be chronicling my thoughts on the various games I play for either of those events as well as any extras I feel like chucking in. If you want to see my journal for last year, here's a link.

    Goal: Complete fifteen games
    Completed: 7/15
    Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIV (Stormblood), Genshin Impact, Pokemon Scarlet, PokeRogue




     
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    The Cat Lady


    The Cat Lady is a horror puzzle game created and developed by R. Michalsky/Harvester Games back in 2012. You play as Susan Ashworth (the titular Cat Lady), a severely depressed woman who is returned to life after trying to kill herself and given the task of murdering a bunch of horrible killers.

    As far as the writing goes, the story is quite simple but it deals with some very complicated subject matter. Despite this though, I think it does do that subject matter and the dark and difficult themes it deals with justice. That is because the area where the writing shines is the characters. The villains are all suitably hateable but, more importantly, Susan and her eventual sidekick (Mitzi) are both complex, likeable characters who are very well-written. It's not all perfect, there's one chapter that is extremely goofy and kind of hurts the tone. But other than that, the writing is quite well done without any major problems.

    The mechanics and gameplay of The Cat Lady are also extremely simple. The only controls you really use are the directional keys on your keyboard other than Escape to get to the pause menu. You use those directional keys to navigate 2D maps and interact with various objects on the maps or in your inventory to solve puzzles. I generally dislike puzzle games because the puzzles almost never use actual logic to solve and mostly rely on players stumbling on bizarre solutions to simple problems. The Cat Lady largely manages to avoid this problem, although there are definitely a few irksome puzzles that fall into a trap. More problematic is the clunkiness of the system. Sometimes you get stuck on one thing while trying to interact with another and in a few segments this can be a real issue because they're timed.

    Visually, The Cat Lady, is kind of a strange one to judge. The game is not pretty. Frankly, it's pretty ugly for the most part with a weird art style and low quality graphics. However, this also actually kind of works for it? To the point where I would say a lot of it is actually an intentional design choice. The very distinctive style adds a lot to the gritty, grimy horror aesthetic and atmosphere of the game. Plus, you'll never forget it.

    The audio is also a mixed bag. The soundtrack is pretty much all bangers, no notes. It has a moody, alt-rock soundtrack mixed with more typical horror VGM audio. It's very atmospheric and sets the tone nicely. It's also just pleasant to listen to on its own. The Cat Lady is also fully-voiced... which is not necessarily a good thing. Susan, Doctor X and Mitzi's VAs are solid but the rest of the acting is largely terrible. Bad to the point where I think the game would have been spookier and all-around better if it hadn't been voiced at all.

    So, The Cat Lady is a bit of a mix. There are some things about it that are pretty bad, but others that are really quite good. I'd say it trends more to the positive side over all and I'd recommend giving it a shot. Just know what you're getting in for because some stuff will probably irk you or take some adjusting to.

    Writing: 8/10
    Gameplay: 5/10
    Visuals: 7/10
    Sound: 5/10
    Total: 25/40
     

    Genshin Impact - Natlan

    Much like with my last Genshin update, I actually finished the Natlan story a while back. But I'm posting about it now wheee.

    Natlan was perhaps the grandest the story has been yet with the scale of the story it told. Which, I suppose, is to be expected for a story dealing with a nation perpetually at war with the Abyss, a plot against the goddess of death and told across the realms of both the living and dead. The stakes have never been so present in the story. You see the death and destruction in ways you usually don't. You get a feel for the weight the people of Natlan are carrying after hundreds of years of being besieged and how desperate Mavuika's plan to combat this is. Not to mention the insanity of Mavuika and The Captain's various things with Ronova - which is a sentence that will definitely make sense to people who don't know who any of those people are.

    Something else that the writing for Natlan does very well though, is endear the characters to you. All of the characters are likeable and engaging in their own ways and all of them feel relevant to the overarching plot. Definitely this was an improvement on Fontaine where several characters were either not that interesting, had little to do with the story or both (not that Fontaine was bad, it was just mostly built around 3-4 characters and not all at the same time).

    Finally, the trend of expanding on and fleshing out the lore of Teyvat more with each new nation continued and continued well. We're getting more and more of an understanding of the history of the world and how everything fits together while also sprinkling in new concepts that enhance the world without making things too convoluted or contradictory.

    As far as the gameplay goes, Natlan added a lot compared to previous nations. The saurians are a fun addition to the game as not just enemies but as options for solving puzzles, participating in combat and exploring the world. The Nightsoul mechanic unique to the characters of Natlan (kind of like how Fontaine has its Arke and Ousia alignment mechanic, although it works very differently) is also interesting, allowing for a lot of unique abilities that are great for exploration and make for a very different combat experience. As always, I'm impressed with how the game has managed to keep from becoming stale mechanically without drastically changing itself.

    Visually, Genshin has always been a pretty game. Natlan isn't an exception to this rule with some pretty striking and atmospheric environments. That being said though, I wouldn't say it is as visually appealing as the best some of the other nations have to offer. It's still pleasant to look at, but doesn't hit the same highs as Liyue, Inazuma, Sumeru or Fontaine.

    Comparatively though, the audio is quite possibly the best in the game. The voice actors all do a fantastic job as always, but the biggest thing here is the soundtrack. The music of Natlan is incredible, taking inspiration from a lot of different cultures and genres and blending them into a fantastic atmosphere that adds a lot to the game.

    So yeah, I'm still loving this game and I'm enjoying all the new content just as much as the old and sometimes more. I will forever lament that Genshin gets a bad reputation because of being a gacha because it's legitimately one of my favourite games.

    Writing: 8/10
    Gameplay: 9/10
    Visuals: 7/10
    Sound: 9/10
    Total: 33/40
     
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    Luigi's Mansion

    So, for the Game-Along this month, someone else had to choose our game for us. Luigi's Mansion was chosen for me which was... an interesting choice given how much I hate tedium and collectathons.

    The story of the game is simple enough. Mario has gone missing in a mysterious haunted mansion and Luigi has to turn ghost-buster to rescue him from King Boo. There's not a lot to it at all. The ghosts all have little bios if you want to look at them but they add little to the game. The real charm in as far as the writing comes pretty much entirely from Luigi who gets the most characterisation and personality I have ever seen from a Mario brother. He's cowardly, but courageous and endearing for both.

    The gameplay was a double-edged sword. Obviously, I hated running around collecting the various boos (especially fucking Booswagle and Booregard). But the game's basic mechanics of sucking up ghosts Ghostbusters style and spitting out elemental effects absorbed from certain ghosts were cool. There were some neat little puzzles and, for the most part, I enjoyed the boss battles too. Unfortunately, the game was held back some by a bit of jank and the finicky controls. There were several times where Luigi started turning randomly on his own or where the angle was a hair-off because of the controls feeling like the oscillate between not sensitive at all and way too sensitive with no middle ground. This led to some otherwise really cool fights like King Boo/Bowser getting really frustrating through no fault of either me or the general design of the game, but entirely because of jank. I will say though that the Nanna ghost was just awful all around. She was boring and janky both, which is not a great combination. I did have a good time for the most part, but sometimes I wanted to pull my hair out with annoyance. That's just what you get with an older game a lot of the time though.

    Visually, I think the game holds up pretty well for a GameCube title. It's not got the sort of beauty you would get from most modern games or anything, but it has a fun, silly haunted house atmosphere that it sells really well and Luigi's animations have a lot of charm.

    I think where the game arguably shines the most is the audio though. Not only does the game have a banger soundtrack, but little touches like the sounds of Luigi moving about and interacting with the mansion, the different ghost noises and Luigi whistling his own theme were all excellent.

    So yeah, Luigi's Mansion is a little dated. However, it's not nearly as bad as it could have been. It was still a lot of fun and holds up way better than something like the original Spyro games do, as a point of comparison. I'm not super eager to rush into the other Luigi's Mansion titles, but I had a good time for the most part and I'd say give this one a shot.

    Writing: 4/10
    Gameplay: 7/10
    Visuals: 6/10
    Sound: 7/10
    Total: 24/40
     

    Mad Father

    For March's Game-Along theme, we were playing games based on puzzles. I decided to go with Mad Father because it was quick and the horror vibe was a nice distraction from the fact I'm not actually huge on puzzle games myself most of the time. Besides, it has been in my backlog forever.

    Story-wise, you play as a young girl named Aya trying to rescue your scientist father and house maid from the twisted ghosts that now haunt your manor. As you do so though, you begin to uncover the truth around your father's twisted experiments and why the malevolent hauntings are all his fault to begin with. In the end, you have to choose what actions to take when you find him which determines which ending you get. I ended up getting the true ending. For the most part the story is handled pretty well. It's nothing crazy but it's written okay, if a bit rushed. The ending though... there's some slight foreshadowing if you really dig around for it but it really makes no sense given the character development we have seen up to that point. So I wasn't a fan of how the game concluded. The premise of the game and how it plays out up to there is fine, so I don't hate the writing but it's nothing special either and that ending really does sour my opinion some.

    Mechanically, the game essentially revolves around solving puzzles throughout the house to progress towards your father. Sometimes you will also need to perform quic-time events to avoid being killed by a vengeful ghost. The puzzles were mostly fairly logical and not super hard to solve. Some of them though were really obtuse to the point I tried to find a guide for them... only to then discover the game had updated and changed from the original order and layout of the puzzles (touche developer). The good news is that it's definitely possible to stumble around clicking on everything until you find something you can use somewhere. It was just a little annoying to have to do that. Most of the puzzles, especially in the latter parts of the game, were easy enough to figure out though and made plenty of sense. The QTE's were a fun addition to a type of game they don't normally appear in and I think were actually exactly right for difficulty. So, as far as the actual gameplay goes, only one real complaint.

    Visually the game looks quite good. The pixel art is really nicely done. Not the most incredible stuff I've ever seen by any margin - it's no Finding Paradise - but it was pleasing to look at and managed the spooky vibe well. However, the little cut-in images an excellent addition to that looked really good and added a lot to the atmosphere. They elevated the visuals a lot in my opinion. I have less to say about the sound. The sound design was solid and did what it was meant to do for the atmosphere. I don't have anything really to say about the music though other than it was neither bad nor noteworthy. It was simply unobtrusive game ambience. when it was there.

    So yeah, over all, it's a fun and quick game if you want to kill a couple of hours. It's also cheap enough that I'd say it's worth the money. It's far from being the best game ever though. I liked it, but it isn't going into any hall of fames.

    Writing: 5/10
    Gameplay: 5/10
    Visuals: 6/10
    Sound: 5/10
    Total: 21/40
     
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    Jump Force


    So, not only am I late to write this one but I'm really late to write up my Nier;Automata entry. However, I'm waiting to write about Nier until I've completed the B and C routes and seen the full picture. Anyway, on to Jump Force.

    If you don't remember what that is, that's because it disappeared from the public eye very quickly after it sold worse than hoped and its online features were abruptly discontinued. It's a Bandai Namco fighting game created in conjunction with Shonen Jump. The story is basically that characters from a bunch of classic SJ franchises get dumped into the real world as part of a crazy entities plot and the player - a normal person at first - gets caught up in the chaos and turned into an anime-style fighter to save their life. There's honestly not much more to it that that. There's motives given to the villains, but nothing even close to ground-breaking. It's basically a more poorly written Re:Creators if the author actually had the rights to iconic characters.

    Obviously, watching characters from different iconic franchises interact and punch things/each other is the main draw. So you would expect the combat to be the best part of the game. And, it is! It's far from the best in-game combat I have experienced. It's not even the best I've experienced in the mountain of Bandai Namco fighters. It was, mostly, fun though. Simple but effective. That being said though, it did sometimes suffer from some jank/clunkiness. Not enough to really spoil anything, but enough to make me scratch my head at times. The character customisation was quite good too, but it could have been better. More options that weren't just directly ripped from the designs of the existing characters or others from their stories would have been nice as would a wider variety of moveset options. There was a lot of customisation really, but some more versatility in what was available would have been nice.

    Visually... the game is a mixed bag. The environments look quite good and the player character options trend towards looking pretty good too - limited wardrobes aside. The problem comes more from trying to take several very different and distinct art styles and make them look good next to each other. For the most part, they succeeded and - at the least - character didn't usually look too weird next to each other. However, some characters definitely looked more awkward than others. Boa Hancock looks weird in One Piece, where she's from because Oda draws women with... interesting anatomy. Next to characters from other series she looks like a vision-impaired doppelganger who only knows what people look like from listening to audio books. She's not the only character who didn't translate cleanly, but she's definitely the worst. So I guess... they tried?

    Audio-wise the music was solid. Nothing terrible but also nothing that really stood out. Credit where it is due though, the voice acting was very good. But you'd kind of hope that was the case given that it was a series based entirely around some of the most iconic characters ever.

    So... yeah. This was one of the games of all time. It was fun and I'm glad I finally went back and actually finished it. But was it good? No. Objectively the game is very middling. And there's really no excuse for that. Nobody ever expected Jump Force to be an artistic masterpiece. However, this should have been a slam dunk given the brand power and money behind it. But in the end it failed to deliver on that potential. It's not surprising to me that I forgot about it until I browsed my library for unfinished games and that other people probably don't remember it either.

    Writing: 2/10
    Gameplay: 6/10
    Visuals: 5/10
    Sound: 5/10
    Total: 18/40
     

    PokeRogue

    For this month's theme of roguelikes and roguelites, I decided pretty quickly on giving PokeRogue another shot. I know I enjoy it and it was something I could probably get through fairly quickly in an otherwise really hectic month. It actually took me longer than planned on account of a lot of very bad luck (typical), but I got through it fairly quickly still ending with a team of Nihilego, Corviknight, Conkeldurr, Porygon-Z and Magnezone.

    For those of you who don't know, PokeRogue is a Pokemon fangame that adopts a roguelite format. You select your starting team using a point buy system and then battle your way through 200 floors collecting items, earning egg vouchers and catching new Pokemon to expand your current team and later available starting Pokemon options. Catching or hatching repeat Pokemon also improves upon the versions of them available at the beginning.

    The way the game is built, there's very loosely implied to be some sort of time-looping/save the world plot going on by your interactions with your rival and Eternatus at the end. But that vague hint at a narrative is the closest thing to a story you're going to get. Character wise there's similarly not much to say, although the developers have done a really good job of portraying all the various Pokemon characters you can run into quite closely to their original interpretations. So there's that.

    Mechanically, the game is very well done. The Pokemon battle/monster catching format actually lends itself very well to the roguelike/roguelite format and the slight tweaks to the item and levelling mechanics, the expanded movepools, additional functionality for shiny Pokemon and methods for expanding your Pokemon options and powering up your roster are all well thought out and well implemented. The battles mostly feel well balanced too, which is very impressive for the variety of encounters there are and the much more exaggerated power-levels of everything in the later floors compared to actual Pokemon games. Eternatus does sometimes feel a little overtuned though. It's a very difficult fight without the exact right kind of line-up and sometimes the last rival fight and some of the e4/champion encounters can be quite difficult too. It's genuinely a very fun game though, even for people like me who don't generally vibe very much with roguelikes.

    Visually the game is solid too. Flynn and Ivy have cool character designs and the developers have done a really good job of creating 2D sprites for things that came out in the 3D era and have even added additional shiny varieties with higher rarities and greater perks that mostly look really good. Quite often they're a lot better than the normal, canon shiny designs for Pokemon. The music is also really good too. There's a decent amount of stuff from the actual game (although some of it might be remxies?) still included for stuff like gym/e4 and evil team encounter themes. But there's also a lot of excellent original music too.

    I like PokeRogue a lot and I'm impressed with how well it works and with the developers' continued work on it. Even though it is fully available, they are constantly adding updates and improvements and running special events like the current Pride Month event with increased shiny chances. Definitely check it out if you're in the market for a fangame with a different spin to it.

    Writing: 2/10
    Gameplay: 9/10
    Visuals: 7/10
    Sound: 7/10
    Total: 25/40
     
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