[Game Journal] The upward spiral of videogames

911 Operator
911 Operator puts you in the shoes of 911 operator (surprisingly). And I have a really mixed feelings about his game. The idea behind it is amazing, but there is no depth to it and the execution is awful.

Like there is a huge ad for other games from these devs right after starting the game. I didn't even get to the main menu and was already hit with an ad. And the same ad was shown when I wanted to close the game. Maybe I'm old, but this is stupid.

The main menu once again has amazing idea, with it being the call center and most options being displayed on computer displays. But once again, the first one I noticed was an ad for the game's Facebook page and it took me a while until I found settings.

Since this was my first time running the game, I clicked on tutorial. It started good, introduced a preparation a little bit, until it decided to go to the main game screen and mentioned that it will explain the rest of the preparation later. But, after finishing the first game, the tutorial just ended and I was thrown in the next day, without even choosing a game mode. So I played for a while and unlocked new cities. When I booted the game up again and clicked continue, I was greeted by a title Chapter 1 and was back in the first city. But this time I didn't unlock new cities and move in them, but instead run through a "story" mode. And the story is really almost non-existent. There are few scripted events (that I already went through in tutorial) and 2 special days - one with earthquake and one with a terrorist's attack. The earthquake one was great, because it caught me unprepared, but the terrorist one was weak. And it was supposed to be a grand finale. I somehow got past it, failed to find/stop the terrorist and I was still told I did a great job and the game ended.

The gameplay loop was simple. It wasn't necessary bad, but it got repetitive and boring quickly. It can be boiled down to simple colour matching. The game told me to send right amount of help to each case, but I ended up one day with 100% efficiency, despite accidentally sending single unarmed police officer against 4 armed thieves. Well, efficiency worked randomly, since I ended up with about 70% on a perfect run, where I didn't fail a single task.

What I liked about the game were educational instructions that appeared on the loading screens. And I also found few easter eggs to popular TV shows like Breaking Bad or How I Met Your Mother.

But that is pretty much everything. The gameplay was bearable enough for me to finish the the main campaign, but I have no desire to touch it ever again. 5/10.
 
So, I was delaying posting about CTR for about a week, and I finished different game in the meantime, so there are two updates at once.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
Let's keep this one short. I loved the original. This remaster mostly keeps the original intact, but adds new tracks, characters and customization. It has weird difficulty curve, where I was miles ahead of other racers on easy, but usually ended in the lower half on medium. I don't remember the original to be this hard. Switch version I owned also had long loading. I also didn't like the idea of microtransactions, but I'm not a collector and don't really care about getting everything from the shop. I already bought Spyro and that's all I need.

I'll keep playing this game with my friends and family, but I finished the main story, did some time trials and special challenges, found out it's still a great game, so I can check it as finished. 8/10.

Tell Me Why
Tell Me Why is adventure game from DONTNOD. And since I loved first Life is Strange, I had my eyes on this game for a while. I didn't hear if it was good or bad, it just always came out as "that game with trans character" on the internet, so I wasn't sure if I should buy it. Especially since I didn't like second LiS. But since it was free in June, I decided to give it a try.

Right from the start, it tries to be original Life is Strange and fails miserably. It has a weird pacing. Like it tries to have this heartful and emotional reunion of the main characters literally 5 minutes into the game. I played for each of them for 2 minutes before this scene. I even didn't know their names at that point, but was supposed to like and enjoy this scene? But then, right in the next scene, I was forced to wait for several minutes on a boat, until I was allowed to continue. There was nothing to do, I already explored and talked with everyone I could, but the game said "no, you're waiting here until I let you continue!" And sadly this problem was prevalent throughout the whole game. There were weird pauses in the dialogue, where I couldn't do anything, just watch two characters in their idle animation doing nothing.

The story suffers because of this. There are few interesting plot points and the premise of uncovering main characters' mum's secrets was great, but there is such a pointless dialogue and scenes sticked to it. This game could easily be 3-4 hours long and nothing of a value would be lost. There are some illogical errors, like one of the main characters saying they can't hear what is being said in the next room, because doors are closed, when the game shows several times that the very same character can hear other people through the very same door later. Or there is one moment, when one character says they are hungry and should eat, but when I click on a breakfast that was made for them, they say they are not hungry. There is also a side story about a kid going missing, but it has no ties to the main plot and is never resolved. It is there just to waste your time more.

The story is followed by one of the most boring dialogues I've ever seen in adventure game. It's trying so hard to be deep, but it's just annoying and not interesting at all. Plus the characters sometimes decides to argue for no apparent reason at all, just to prolong the game.

On the other hand, I have to say that the game has pretty cool cinematography and soundtrack that fits the setting. So at least the atmosphere is great. There is a scene, where one of the main characters enters their old house for the first time in 10 years and that scene hit me with tears. Funnily enough, I think this was the reaction the game was hoping in with the previously mentioned reunion. Most of the puzzles were also fun to solve.

Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room - Tyler, the trans character. The devs makes a great deal about him while marketing the game, even dedicating the whole FAQ on their site to him, instead, you know, the game. But he's is badly written character. Not that there would be many better written characters, but Tyler takes the cake. Most of his interactions are about him being trans and everyone else being mean (even when it doesn't make any sense for other characters). Him being trans is basically his whole personality and has no tie or importance to the main story past the first half of the first chapter. The worse thing about him is that he is completely useless. If he wasn't in the game, nothing would happen differently. It's his sister Alyson that is always in the story's spotlight, especially in the last chapter, when it's her alone, who gets to uncover most of the secrets. Or there are both siblings present for the rest. I mean Tyler isn't even present for most of the final chapter. For someone, who is heavy marketing point for the game, he is reduced to side character pretty hard.

Siblings have a special magical power that lets them see their old memories and talk using telepathy. But just like with everything in this game, it's just there and has no meaning. Memories are mostly optional and are there for world-building and telepathy, while sometimes used in the cutscenes, can be used by the player only in about 3 conversations.

Overall, this was disappointment. I didn't have my expectation high, but god, it's making me sad to see how low did DONTNOD fall. 4.5/10.
 
Monster Hunter: Rise
Monster Hunter: Rise was the game that finally pushed me to buy Nintendo Switch. I'm a MH series fan since MH4U and have a very specific relationship with the series. Once in a while, I get an urge to play Monster Hunter game, play only it exclusively for a few months, then get my fill of hunting, stop playing and forget about Monster Hunter for like a year or so. But I always enjoy playing it.

Rise takes the classic Monster Hunter formula and adds some of the best improvements in Wirebugs and Palamutes. I main Great Swords and love doing aerial attacks, so I used Wirebugs every single attack. It also made fights more fastpaced and I liked it. But when I switched to Dual Blades to test them, I barely used Wirebugs at all. Seems like they are more fitting for slow weapons. Palamutes were great for quickly transporting around the map or to gather loot. Speaking of gathering, everything from mining to picking up herbs is quit now.

What I didn't like is the monster selection. A lot of them appeared in Worlds and they recycle the very same monsters for both low and high rank. There is only one insect-like monster in the whole game, which is a shame, because I loved MH4U's insects and would love to see them more. On the other hand, i have to say that the final battle with Thunder Serpent Narwa was really great, especially when compared to the boring mess that were boss fights in World. Another feature that I didn't like are rampages. They were basically glorified Zorah Magdaros fights, but even more boring and artificially dragged. I hate every single one that was forced on me during the story.

Overall, this is another great MH game, but it has barely any new interesting content, which resulted in it feeling more like a DLC for World than anything else. The story is almost non-existent, but the game still wants you to think there is a story. I'll probably return to it later, when there is more stuff to do. 8.5/10.
 
Dark Souls: Remastered
I've been wanting to play Dark Souls ever since it was first release, but the internet made me thing it's unfair and unsatisfying game to play. On the other hand, one of my closest friend is huge fan of Dark Souls and he was always persuading me to give it a try. But I had almost no faith in my own skills, so I was avoiding it until now.

I went in mostly blind. The aforementioned friend help me with creating the character and later help me brainstorm the ideal set and stats for my character. My plan was to use two-handed weapon. My philosophy was: If I can kill it first, it can't hurt me. And the game started pretty easy. I picked fire bombs as my gift, so I was able to kill the first boss easily and get his hammer. I missed my starting sword, so I was thinking about using this hammer, but backtracked, because I found it highly suspicious that I was supposed to kill a regular enemy without sword.

Th next two locations were pretty harsh. I was still getting used to the controls and was testing my equipment. At this point, I was still using shield and mid-rolls, since I haven't found a good weapon. Until I beat Taurus Demon and picked up Claymore. This weapon was one of the first 2h weapons I found, so I decided to equip it for now. And it actually stayed with me until the end, because I quickly learned how to use it and other 2h weapons felt slow in comparasion to it. When I got to Bell Gargoyles, I got naked, so I could move faster and beat them on my first try.

But then, I got stucked on Capra Demon. I wasn't able to survive past 5 seconds for at least whole hour on this boss. I thought this is what internet was talking about. This is where Dark Souls really starts. This was also the moment my friend helped me brainstorm items and stats fit for my strategy.

I have no idea how I was able to beat Capra Demon and was ready to die more for the rest of the game, but... I barely died after this. At this point I mastered Claymore and rolls, experience most of games' traps and overall got used to the mechanics. I beat most bosses on first or second try and even beat Gwyn in about 10 seconds without getting hit by him once.

So, not sure if it's clear, this game was extremely rewarding and satisfying to play. It has similar mechanics to Gothic and Kingdom Come: Deliverance and you know these are my favourite games. Exploration is meaningful, the world has interesting lore and amazing atmosphere, the music is fitting, the level design is one of the best I've seen in a videogame and battle system is fun. If I would have to mention some negatives - few hitboxes were really weird and I missed/got hit attacks that should have hit/miss.

This game sucked me in and I want more. Definitely one of the best games I've ever played. 9.5/10.

Next up, I should start Yo-kai Watch II for Game Along or finish Nekopara 4 first. But I already installed Dark Souls 2...
 
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Capra Demon is always a shitty boss fight really, fuck whoever designed that fight (also fuck Bed of Chaos)

Janp said:
beat Gwyn in about 10 seconds without getting hit by him once.
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whoa hold on

you beat Gywn in 10-15 seconds....like literally or figuratively?
 
Nah said:
whoa hold on

you beat Gywn in 10-15 seconds....like literally or figuratively?
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I mean it was probably more than 10 seconds, maybe somewhere between 20 to 40 seconds, but it felt way too fast for a final boss and I'm positive it was the fastest win against a boss during my run. The fight went something like this: We run towards each other, Gwyn attacked, but I dodged his sword with a roll, then I was able to hit him few times, which took about 1/5 of his HP, he then attacked, but missed me completely, because I was standing right next to him, I attacked again and took down another portion of his HP. And this repeat like twice before I beat him.
 
Nah said:
Even that sounds really fast to me. Though it's been quite some time since I last fought Gwyn and I'm not gonna pretend that I'm great at anything so maybe it's just me.
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Sorry for the late reply, but yeah, it surprised me as well. I mean it was suppose to be the big boss, yet I barely realized I'm fighting him before he died. Anyway, what are your thoughts on Dark Souls 2? I just beat it few hours ago and I was disappointed by it. It felt like a bad attempt at copying the original game, but making everything worse and more boring. And now I'm afraid of playing Dark Souls 3 in case it's just like Dark Souls 2.
 
Janp said:
Sorry for the late reply, but yeah, it surprised me as well. I mean it was suppose to be the big boss, yet I barely realized I'm fighting him before he died. Anyway, what are your thoughts on Dark Souls 2? I just beat it few hours ago and I was disappointed by it. It felt like a bad attempt at copying the original game, but making everything worse and more boring. And now I'm afraid of playing Dark Souls 3 in case it's just like Dark Souls 2.
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Dark Souls 2 is generally the least liked of the 3 Dark Souls games, so it's not unusual that you felt a bit disappointed by it. I don't dislike it, but I'm in the minority on that. There is a thing or two though I take issue with it.

Give Dark Souls 3 a try though, I think it's worth it. Each one of them gives me a different vibe and I wouldn't say that 3 is just like 2. Get "The Fire Fades" edition specifically, it comes with the DLC stuff and that's a significant bonus. I imagine that it's less money that way than buying the DLC separately, and at this point probably only costs marginally more than buying the base game by itself.
 
Thanks. I already spend about an hour or so in DS3 and so far it feels a lot like DS1. I think I'm going to like it more than DS2.

Speaking of it, I finally got around to put my thoughts into proper review.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin
This game... felt like a joke. But let's start with positives. I like changes to Estus flasks upgrades and introduction of Lifegems. It made healing feel earned, unlike the first game, where I could just easily get 20 Estus flasks and heal every single scratch. Few bosses like Skeleton Lords, Executioner's Chariot, Burnt Ivory King and Royal Rat Vanguard were cool and unique. The premise of the story is interesting. I like the whole "looking for a cure" narrative, but it sadly isn't handled very well in the end. Locations were still fun to explore. But that's pretty much all good I can say about it.

It has bland colour palette, especially when compared to the previous game. The world/level design lost the charm of being an all-connected maze. Here, there is one center hub with several isolated and linear paths coming from it. The enemy placement is awfully done. In the first game, it's almost a puzzle to solve. Instead, the second game just puts 10 basic enemies in the room and calls it a day. It gets boring way too quickly. And bosses aren't better. They are mostly just a reskin of the DS1 bosses with only little change to them or they are regular-ish enemies, but you have to face 2 or 3 of them at the same time. Most bosses feel random and have almost no lore tied to them. It hurts especially with the Great Souls bosses, which are just there and for some reason are important. But maybe I just missed something.

What I would rather miss were the technical problems. The controls felt clunky and unresponsive. The game sometimes didn't react to my actions, forcing me in pushing one button several times. I even tried more controllers, but with the same results. But I could still live with that. The hitboxes felt also really off. I don't mean the change made with the agility stat, which I actually found okay and didn't notice any difference form the first game when I jumped in the attacks. No, I'm talking about moments, where my attack didn't register a hit on a huge enemy lying in front of me or me getting hit by a forward attack, when I'm standing behind the enemy. It even got to the point that both me and one boss just stood next to each other and couldn't hit each other. Then... the game started lagging every time there was a particle effect bigger than torch. It turned some fights like against The Rotten, Smelter Demon or even against the Aldia into a powerpoint presentation. You can imagine that it isn't really something you want to experience in a reaction-based game. And no matter how I changed the settings, I couldn't solve this problem. So I had to summon phantoms for some of those fights, when I deemed them unplayable.

I've played as Cleric this time and to make things harder, I've used the starting mace (2-handed, later infused with lighting) and armor. I did change few sacred chimes, but in the end used Dragon Chime. And I did put a Saint's Hood on after getting it. I once again went with the strategy of one-shotting everything, but this time it took 2-3 hits to kill most basic enemies. I also decided not to put any points in Vigor, Endurance and Vitality at the start of the game to make things ever more challenging and only put I think 2 levels in Adaptability before realizing that it had almost no effect on my strategy. I just put everything in Strength, Faith and Attunement. I found miracles fun alternative to the regular attacks

Overall, this felt like a version of the original game from someone who didn't fully understand what made the original so great. It goes more with quantity over quality, which can be even seen in the final encounter, which is basically 3 (technically 4) bosses right after each other, but all of them with trivial moveset and boring to fight against. I was actively thinking about just dropping the game, since I barely had any fun playing it past the first few hours. 5/10.
 
Yo-kai Watch 2: Fleshy Souls
This sequel felt a lot like third version of a Pokémon game. It added some pretty QoL improvements like better quest journal, info about Yo-kai's type, element and favourite food right in the game and faster bike. And I'm sure I'm forgetting on some more. There are also new locations and new Yo-kai to befriend.

But there are also several new minigames that are so braindead, boring and one of them straight up creepy. And the worst part is that those minigames are forced upon the player in the already boring story. There is a train minigame that have you ride a train as a passenger. It takes way to long to travel from one station to the other and you are forced into easy battles with Yo-kai or are given a candy from random NPC on a train in the meantime. Especially that last part is weird. The main character is still a kid in a 5th grade. And the game portaits a stranger sitting next to it, saying how nice the kid is and giving it a candy as a good thing. Aside from that, the story is a lot worse than in the first game. Most of the missions are just "run from the point A to point B" or "bring this specific Yo-kai here" and cutscenes sometimes felt like they were taken straight from Pokémon Sun and Moon.

There are less bossfights, but they all feel unique in their own way. I especially enjoyed the final segment of the game with 2 final bossfights. Final battle with Kin and Gin was cool because of the predeterminated team I had to use and I even wiped in the second phase of Dame Dedtime bossfight. That phase has no right being so hard in otherwise Pokémon level of easy game. I mean I didn't even inflicted a single point of damage to her and she just obliterated my whole party with my own Soultimate moves. DS2 devs, please take notes here.

Overall, I think I would pick the first game over this one to play through the story. But on the other side, this game really shines in the post-game, where it is basically the first game + the QoL improvements and new side stories, where you can befriend bosses from the first game. 7/10. But I swear if I find a single hide-and-seek quest in the post-game, I'm changing this to 0/10.
 
Finally got around to write down my thoughts about 2 more games.

Little Big Workshop
This game has no right to be as addicting as it was. I'm not usually a fan of tycoons and builders, because they usually lack a clear goal and are sometimes way too complicated. But this game pulled me in and I even continued playing it after finishing the main goal. I had so much fun designing my own products and working out the perfect way to make profit.

What I found funny was that I named my company "A Very Evil Company", because there is DLC available for this game, where you play as a evil mastermind. But I didn't buy the DLC. I only took an inspiration in it. Then, I found out that the main rival of the game is called "Nemesis". So my company was practically bad guys.

Back to gameplay. I found it relaxing to watch my little gnomes doing all the work most of the time. But there were moments when the AI just stopped working properly. I failed so many commissions because my gnomes refused to finish the product. It hanged at 99.9% with the highest priority and they refused to finish it. I even had to cancel some of them and manually sell all material and lose money.

Another negative that almost made me drop the game was building mode. In it, you can make new rooms or recreate the ones you already have. But it's so intuitive. Like I said, I almost stopped playing the game the first time I tried to use it. It's not explained at all and some function won't do what they should. For example the "demolition" won't just destroy a wall. It will also build a new wall one tile closer to the rest of the room. But only if it's outside wall. Otherwise, it works well. The "build" function also has a very specific way of working, where you have to select the whole room and then expend it to make that room bigger.

The characters in the game are magical. There are 4 customers you can take special commissions from and they all have a great design. I enjoyed reading their dialogues and working with them. I wouldn't mind more customers. And just as the characters, the area where the game takes place is also, simply put, magical. It's a regular table with a phone, books, cup of tea and other stuff thrown on it. And you build a factory between it.

Overall, this game was surprisingly good. As I said, I'm not a fan of builders so I had really low expectations comming in, but I couldn't stop playing this game. It has problems that are really annoying, but the gameplay and aesthetic are solid and fun. 8/10.

Gothic II: Gold - Bow only run
Do you know that moment, when you want to play a game out of nowhere? As I was installing Dishonored, I was chatting at a local Gothic Discord and got an itch to replay G2NOTR. And since I like doing challenge runs in Gothic games, I decided to do a run using only bows.

If you are following these updates, you probably already know that original Gothic is one of my favourite games of all time. But I'm not that big of a fan of G2NOTR. Regular G2 is fine, even though it has more cliche story and completely different atmosphere, but the addon also breaks the battle system in a poor attempt to make it more challenging.

I don't want to talk that much about the game, since it's one of the games I had more than a decade of replaying it to form an opinion, in contrast to most games that I play the first time (or barely remember them). The game is overall better version of the first Gothic. It's more polished, it's longer, has more areas to explore and is actually complete. But the story is very cliche. It goes from playing as a criminal thrown in the convict's colony and surviving in pretty dark world influenced by The Dark Eye, to a chosen one has to beat evil dragons and ultimate evil. And the world is more colorful and feel more like classic western RPG. And it retcon basically everything about what you learned about the world in the first game.

But the biggest problem I have with Gothic 2 and especially with NOTR, since it was changed there, is a battle system and damage calculation. It's complete RNG now. Both you and your enemy can land critical hits, but enemies have bigger chance to land them for some reason. And they can easily swing the result of the battle in your defeat. Or win. But it's not fun, since there is barely any skill involved, unlike the first game.

Now, for the challenge itself. It was annoying as hell. And it's because damage calculation for ranged attacks is even worse. There is a big chance your attack will miss even at point blank. That change is over 90% at the start of the game. And even when you have 100% of bow efficiency, you still miss every other shot. So most of the time, I just stand, kept shooting and hoped to kill everything before it can kill me. But there was a weird bug I encountered. Sometimes, when I hit an enemy exactly when they are in the middle of their attack animation, they stopped attacking and just stood there and let me kill them. This made dragon bossfights trivial, since their attacks took a while to actually start.

Overall, aside from the battle system, this game is awesome. It's still fun to explore and interact with alive world. It's dragged down by the battle system, but there is still an option to play as mage, who ignores regular damage calculation. 8.5/10.


Next up, I'll play Dishonored, since I'm not sure if I'll have time for videogames for the rest of the month. But if I can finish Dishonored quickly, then I'll probably finally start Eye of the Beholder 3 and finish Nekopara 4 and Breath of the Wild, before starting Dark Souls 3. I'm still having nightmares about DS2, so I want to take some time from the series.
 
Finally finished Dishonored.

Dishonored
Fun fact I'm adding since this is pretty short review: Dishonored was the last game I've ever pirated all back in 2012 But I haven't finished it until now.

Immersive simulators is not really a genre I would play a lot, but I enjoy each game a lot. And it was the same with Dishonored. I quite enjoyed everything about it. The world, the atmosphere, the characters, the gameplay, the level design... It was, well, immersive.

One thing that I didn't like was how the game kept telling me I can play any way I want. It was okay during the tutorial and even first mission, but I don't think I needed to see it multiple times per level by the end of the game. I also found it kinda ridiculous, since I've decided to go bloody path and kill everyone I encounter. I probably went a little bit overboard and the game told me to stop killing everyone and try stealth at the start of the second level. So, can I play the way I want or not?

I know I didn't go into details as I usually go, but there isn't much I have to say about the game. It was great experience I had a lot of fun with, but I also don't feel like it grabbed me enough to buy the sequel right now. I had my fill and will fondly remember it. 8.5/10.

Next up, I would love to finally wrap up some of the series I have yet to finish. So I'll finish Nekopara 4, Eye of the Beholder 3 and Breath of the Wild as fast as I can. Then, I'll most likely start medling with old Nintendo franchises like Metroid for a while and then, when nights will start to grow long, I'll finally start Resident Evil and Silent Hill series.
 
Nekopara 4
It's hard for me to talk about this game. Or visual novels in general. I don't think they are bad, I actually quite enjoy some of them, but their lack of gameplay makes it harder to review them.

Storywise, I think this is fine entry. It's far better than vol. 0, 1 and 2, but is not as great as vol. 3, which made one of my least favourite character into one of my favourite character. Speaking of characters, this game breaks away from a cycle of the previous games, in which 2 catgirls took the spotlight. Now, there are no more catgirls to focus on, so Kashou, the main character, has finally time to shine. He has a great character arc, exploring themes about legacy and family. His father and master are fine addition to the cast of characters, even though they are a little bit cliché. I didn't like the final twist about them, but I still have to admit that it ties the themes together well.

I also liked new designs of the old characters. Especially their christmas clothes were cute. New animations were also nice to see. On the other hand, there weren't that many new tracks and both opening and ending weren't as good as in previous 2 games.

The worst part about this game is Shigure. Ever since the first game, she is just a bad incest joke that is stretched over 4 games now. And it was never funny to begin with. She takes precious time from Kashou's story, has no interesting dialogue or interaction and no development at all. If anything, this game only strengthened my conviction that this is the worst character in the whole series. Hell, she is not even a character. She's just one bad joke. Nothing else.

Overall, it was great conclusion to the story. I'm glad it focused more on Kashou and gave him enough characterization, since previously he was just a blank character for us to outselves in his place. If there wasn't Shigure present in it at all, I would probably put it above third game. But since it isn't the case, I would say this is the second best Nekopara game out there. 8/10.

Blue Fire
I did not talk about it that much here, but I'm currently playing Breath of the Wild and I'm disappointed with it. It's mediocre game that has barely any Zelda mechanics in it. But this is not the time to talk about it. I mentioned it only because I was feeling like playing the real Zelda game. So I picked up Blue Fire, which is suppose to be a Zelda clone.

This game takes some mechanics and lore from Zelda, Dark Souls and apparently Hollow Knight, but I haven't played that game yet. You take a role of a Warrior of light and shadow awakened into a ruined kingdom of Penumbra. It was taken over by a shadow and it's up to you to free it. The gameplay cycle is simple. Go to the nearest temple, pick a gadget there that will help you explore the temple and the world better, beat the boss, rinse and repeat. If you ever played a Zelda game, you know the drill.

On your way, you will have to beat several hard parkour challenges. These can be pretty hard, but it was fun to traverse and explore each location. But it wasn't without problems. The controls of this game are weird. Not only they break any convention of the modern games, for example, both A and B buttons are confirm and B is also interaction button, but the player character has this weird movement speed and properties, like it was moving on ice all the time. And it didn't help that the very first room is full of black goo that can hurt you. So I lost most of my health just trying to figure out how to move in the first room. The character also went from 0 to 100 in a matter of a second, but it took him longer to do the opposite.

While the parkour is fun, I fairly quickly and accidentally found a way to cheese my way through most of the game. There are special "spirits" that you can equip and they give you variety of special abilities, like ability to use dash twice per jump, faster movement, higher jumps, better jump angle, ability to levitate in the air... With these, I was able to simply skip most of the hard parkour challenges. Like there was one part with moving laser on the walls and sawblades flying around and all I did was jump straight and got past it. But even before getting spirits, there were challenges that could be easily skipped. In the first temple, there was timed course that I couldn't really get past, since my character kept sticking himself to the wall randomly. Luckily, there was a mechanic, where you could dash into the enemy and even when that enemy is far away, you would still dash all the way into it. And there was an enemy hanging out at the end of that puzzle. So I just skipped the whole puzzle this way.

Speaking of combat, it was okay, but similarly to the parkour, it felt a little bit unbalanced. At first, the enemies are extremely squishy, but they quickly get bunch of HP and beating them take so much time that it completely destroys any pacing the game had. So after a while, I just skipped all enemies. Bosses on the other hand were fun, but last 4 bosses (out of 6) were just reskins of each other. But the final boss was something. It had a great design, phases and everything.

The world was interesting, but I was a little bit sad that there aren't that many interesting characters. All locations felt staged and not like a living world. Like one of the main towns is only few disconnected platforms. And there is a small kid living alone at the top of the town.

Overall, this was really great game, but it needs a little bit more polish and balancing. 8/10.

Next, I wanted to play Eye of the Beholder 3, but there are some problems with importing my characters from the previous game and I would probably have to beat the final boss in it again to get all my characters. I'm not sure if I want to play with different party, so in the meantime, I'll started playing original Metroid. And I'm slowly getting through Breath of the Wild.
 
Metroid
While I was searching for some info about this game, I found out I already played it few times in the past. I own Zero Mission, which is a remake, but iirc, there is the original game on the cartridge too. Because of that, I remember where to go or where are some secrets, a little bit, which made navigating better.

But let's take it from the start. This game has a great atmosphere and it all starts in the main menu. The music, the black background and grounded colour all predict the cold and inhospitable planet of Zebes. And the very first screen then only confirms it. Samus is already outnumbered 2 to 1, can't shoot far, has only 30 HP and the enemies are too short to be shot from some angles. Samus is weak, but since you can take the enemies down, it feels fair. Even other harder rooms feel that way. You are always outnumbered, but usually can find some kind of advantage over the enemies.

While sprites and backgrounds looked amazing, I got lost way too many times for my liking and in the end found a map online for backtracking purposes. A lot of rooms were just designed to look the same or are even copy-paste of each other and I find that lazy. On the other hand, I quite enjoyed the way rooms were put together, with enemy and platforms placement and secrets all around me. Actually, there was one small detail I hate and that were enemies running into Samus, when she was still stucked in the room-changing animation. It didn't happen often, but was annoying.

Other than that, I missed an in-game map, but I get why it isn't in the game. I also wasn't a fan of being revived with only 30 HP, but I didn't die that much in the end. Well, the game was fairly short. Was it always so short? I beat the game in two sittings in about 5 hours.

Overall, I was surprised how well this game aged. I was expecting to find it in a really bad and almost unplayable shape, but this game was ahead of its time. There is a real sense of progression that I love. All enemies can feel like a threat and end your run unexpectedly, like when you jump or fall on the crawling enemies and they send you flying in the lava. Platforming was mostly fun, even though I had to get used to Samus movement at the beginning. 9/10.

Next up is Eye of the Beholder 3. I finally decided to replay the final bossfight in EotB2 and got my original party to the final game of the trilogy. It's apparently pretty short and feels quite easy so far.
 
Eye of the Beholder 3: Assault on Myth Drannor
After some time, I returned to this series. From the technical side, it's a huge improvement. There is a huge "All attacks" button that will trigger every possible attack your party can make. And it makes the flow of each battle better. There were also more cutscenes and NPC to have a chat with. Because of that, the world felt more alive, but the feeling of the isolation from the previous games was mostly gone. it was a shame, but I get that each adventure can't be same.

I also found myself not using that many spells, since my characters were already on high levels and my melee fighters could handle most of the fights by themselves. Mages and Clerics were still useful, just not in the combat. I did enjoy new spells quite a lot tho. Like the one that could stop a time. It was so overpowered and yet, there was a good number of scrolls with this spell. My favourite was still the one that created food for everyone. That way, I didn't have to keep rations in my already full inventory. Which brings me to another thing. I barely collected anything, since my inventory was full since the last adventure. Well, it was full since the original game. I did pick up few things, but they mostly just lied in my inventory. Equipment like swords and armor were also pretty rare to see, so I used my weapons from the previous games.

The whole game was surprisingly easy. Especially when compared to the second game, which was extremely hard. IIRC, there were Mind Flayers in one of the first dungeons, yet they died way too quickly and barely scratched my party. And the final boss was just as bad. The start of his battle was interesting, since he summoned few enemies to help him, but the fight is still easy and the boss did nothing at all. Huge downgrade from Dran.

The story also wasn't as cool as in the previous games. In them, there was a nice mystery about what is really going on. Here, you are basically told everything in the intro cutscene. I never understood why did the villain choose the party. It doesn't make sense. The puzzles were solid, but there were also some weak puzzles. These relied way too much on you skipping an item that was crucial to solving the, and it got annoying way too fast.

Overall, it wasn't a bad game. The combat and exploration were still great, the dungeons design was cool and new improvements were welcomed. But the story and puzzles are not as good as in the previous games. 7/10.

Next up, I fired up Firewatch and also decided to finally play Superliminal. Both of there are short, so I think I can manage to beat them in one or two sittings each and write about them before the month ends.
 
Superliminal
As a huge fan of Portal and Stanley Parable, I was looking forward this game and finally got around to play it. It was short, but unique and intensive, adventure.

It starts pretty simple. You can pick up items and either make them big or small and solve puzzles with them. But it quickly turns into something completely different. The game starts playing with your perspective in more and more mindblowing ways. At first, it's just a cube painted on the wall that looks like it could be picked up, but then, the game turns into a "horror" game. The puzzles never grow old. The game always subvert your expectations in unpredictable ways.

The story was nice addition, but it didn't play a huge role. It's presented only through audio bits. It does get a little bit philosophical by the end and presents some cool ideas about changing your perspective or how clinging on your (wrong) perspective can hurt you.

Overall, it is one of the most unique experience I've played this year. And I enjoyed every single puzzle. I wouldn't mind if it was longer and also more story and lore bits. 9.5/10.

I wanted to play Firewatch next, but there were some problems with the controls, so I played something else...

Carto
I decided to play yet another shorter puzzle game and my pick landed on Carto.

The main gimmick is picking up pieces of a map and playing them together in a way that will help you proceed with the story. I was surprised how much story is in the game. It closely follows Carto, a young cartographer, who accidentally makes her grandma's airship crash and the two are separated. The goal of the game is to bring them together again.

What I found interesting was that puzzles weren't only solved by putting pieces together, but also by rotating and manipulating with them. Like there is a locked safe on one piece and you can open it by rotating the piece the correct way the correct number of times. Some puzzles were also solved by by assembling a certain pattern, but the game almost never stated the direction of this pattern. There was a moment, where I had to make a lake look like a fish, but for some reason, it had to face north, so even when I put it together correctly, but in different direction, the game didn't let me continue. Also, few puzzles are made in a way that a new piece appears, when you put other in a certain pattern. There was this one puzzle, where you had to put together 4 pieces with yellow flowers together. But there were only 3 pieces currently available. I had no idea what to do, since there was nothing else to do. So I put the 3 pieces together and the 4th one appeared out of nowhere. How was I suppose to know that? After that, I was looking for this, but it was annoying the first time it happened.

Back to the story. I loved it. Carto meets a lot of different cultures, from grass people to sand people to ice people, but they all have pretty deep lore to them. It felt a lot like classic adventure games in it's approach to them. All of them have cool design and tie very well into the whole map gimmick. The story is still lighthearted and breaks the 4th wall all the time. There is a library with a book about Carto's adventure and the librarian even notes that the floors keep changing all the time.

Overall, it was cute short puzzle game. It dragged a little bit few times, when I was forced to backtrack, and few puzzle repeated themselves, but it was still fun to complete. 8.5/10.
 
Phew, I made it. I finished Firewatch and was able to write my thoughts about it before the end of the month.

Firewatch
This game wasn't what I expected it to be. I thought it's another slightly melancholic and wannabe deep walking simulator like Gone Home or Dear Esther, dealing with the main character's problems with his wife. But it wasn't. And I think that's a good thing.

While it starts as such a game I described above, it slowly turns into an interesting mystery game about what is really going on in the park. Well, nothing really, but I love how Henry jumps straight into thinking it's some big conspiracy. The story's structure is so great. Each chapter has a set goal, but ends up in an unexpected matter. The pacing is little bit off, starting super slow and that going crazy out of nowhere, to end up somewhat fine.

I didn't really like how all characters are written. Dalilah was awful. It felt like the game is forcing the romantic relationship between her and Henry, even tho I never picked a dialogue line that would hint at it. I even refused her offer to go on a date. I wanted to stay with Julia, who seemed like a better person. For Henry, the game let me choose a line, where he's willing to be interrogated by the police, only to follow automatically follow it with Henry saying to Delilah to hide any evidence. And this happens more times throughout the game. It doesn't help that sometimes 2 or more dialogue trees mashed up into one. Like Dalilah talking about the history of the park, only for Henry to answer her that he has a wife. And then sometimes the game just starts the dialogue out of nowhere and usually from the middle of that dialogue tree, like Delilah answering Henry's (yet to be asked) question out of nowhere.

Gameplay-wise, it's fun to traverse and explore the map. You are taken to every corner and have enough freedom to move from point A to point B. What I couldn't get used to is the fact, that you can't run with map in hands. That was such a stupid detail to add. Especially since you can run with anything else. Plus, by zooming in the map, you zoom way too much to find your way around.

Overall, it was fine game. It has a great story, with weak characters and beautiful world that is fun to explore. 8/10.

That's all for September. In October, I'll start playing through horror games. I'll start with Silent Hill, then will most likely play its sequel. Then, I think I'll have enough of tank controls, so I'll play either The Beast inside or Ghost Masters. And then, I'll play few games from Resident Evil series.
 
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Silent Hill
I was afraid to play this game at first. Not only because I was afraid it would be scary, but I had no idea how well it aged. And surprisingly, it aged well. I found tank controls to be fun and fit the game's design. Yeah, there were moments, where the combination of the camera angle and the controls were awful, but it only happened few times in the whole game., I

But even despite that, I loved every second of this game. And was also amazed about how effectively it could scare me. Unlike modern horror games, Silent Hill will let you know there are enemies nearby. That static noise could scare me more than any cheap jumpscare. And then the game started trolling me, by throwing harmless shadow babies in some rooms. Good one, devs.

I was surprised by how generous the game was. I was afraid of running out of ammo at the start, but quickly got enough ammo to survive the rest of the game. But I heard the game becomes brutal in this regard on hard difficulty. I also barely used shotgun and hunting rifle. Those had low amount of ammo overall, so I only used them in bossfights. Speaking of bossfights, they were pretty weak, except for the 3rd one. First boss was a lizard, then the second boss was larva that turns into a moth, but they feel so random. There was nothing that would introduce them prior their bossfight. Nothing special about them. Last two bosses were fine, but there was literally one strategy to use against all bosses. Just run around and shoot them.

The dialogues in this game were weird. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it felt like someone run them through google translate and then let voice actors to record them in random order and without any context. I know this game was made a long time ago, but I found this funny. And sadly it sometimes broke immersion in the world. The story was fine, but at the end of the game, I was still puzzled by few things that happened and what was the point of several characters.

Overall, I can't believe I was avoiding this game for so long. It was fun, scary, had phenomenal soundtrack and aged well. 9/10.
 
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Oh god, I finally beat this game. After almost 50 hours of asking myself why I paid 60€ for it, I'm finally finished.

I'm not sure how to start this review. Before I bought the game, I've only ever seen few minutes from it. I knew I wanted to play it back in 2017, but didn't want to spoil myself. When I was deciding what game to buy with Switch, I decided to go with this over Super Mario Odyssey, because I love Zelda's main loop more.

Sadly, Breath of the Wild has barely any Zelda loop in it. You get all powerups in the first hour and then barely use them or upgrade them. There are also 4 main dungeons that are fun. I like their gimmick of turning their parts. And their design is also cool. But that's it for classic Zelda loop. The rest of the game is a bad Ubisoft game. There are 100+ side dungeons, called shrines, that I would rather not talk about. They have the most braindead puzzles I've ever seen, like climb the ladder, move a ball slightly left, make a bridge with 2 blocks and so on... They are placed over huge boring and empty map. There are few settlements, but they have no meaning, aside from 4 main settlements that are tied to the main dungeons. There is also a bunch of basic sidequests, that once again, feel like something Ubisoft would put in their games.

The game tries to make you think you have a complete freedom about what to do, where to go and how to solve some encounters. But almost every quest limit your gear, path you can take or powers you can use. Most random encounters also have a boulder or explosive barrel placed just in sight for you to use. So it felt like I was still playing in a way devs intended for me to play.

The story wasn't much better. Majority of it takes place 100 years before the game starts. And it's actually pretty cool. Not anything mindblowing, but cool. The "present" story is bearable. Since you can start with any dungeon, everyone will tell you the same few informations and the story never develop. It's exactly what you are told in the first hour by Zelda and then reminded by everyone. There is no twist or no development. It feels like an annoying noise more than anything. I think if this game took place 100 year ago, it would be more fun.

But, since I paid 60€, I didn't want to believe this game is bad. So I spent 4 months doing all side content I could. I usually played in 2-3 hours long sessions, but there was barely a time, when I felt like I accomplished something. Most time, I was just running from point A to B, doing the most simple tasks and being rewarded almost nothing in return. I also learned fairly quickly, that there is no point in exploring the world, aside from looking for shrines. There were either dead ends or few enemies with basic rewards.

Speaking of enemies, there are bogoblins, that can be blue, red, black, there are slightly bigger bogoblins, that can once again be found in various colours, there are also skeleton versions of bogoblins and bigger bogoblins, as well as lizards, that can be once again found in various colours, and finally bats and slimes, both in various colours. Oh and there are ancient guardians and Ganon bosses. Weirdly, guardians come only in one colour, but in various shapes. While it seems, there is a huge roster of enemies, they all act the same, well aside from guardians. Each battle felt the same, no matter who I faced against. Even bosses felt the same. There was really only one strategy to all fights.

In the end, after I finished about 100 shrines, which took me about 45 hours, I encountered a shrine with fighting tutorial. That was the moment I decided that I don't want to play this game anymore. I quickly beat the rest of the game, turned it off, put cartridge back to the box and hopefully I'll never have to touch it again.

To end this with positives, the box has beautiful art. And the inside isn't just white colour. For some reason, this game also has one of the best weather systems I've ever seen. While I didn't like the game, the first moment I got to see a storm is one of the best moments I've experienced this year. And how all elements reacted to each other was also great.

Overall, I get why this game is popular. But the lack of Zelda content and way too much bad open world stuff makes this game so mediocre and boring. 5/10.
 
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