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Jul 22nd, 2024 at 16:06:28 - Rollerdrome (PC) |
This one didn't land with me. It's like Tony Hawk with guns. And I just played Solar Ash, which had skating, in a way, but this one is more Tony Hawk because you have to do tricks. Note that I always disliked skating and snowboarding games where you are supposed to learn tricks and rack up points with combos, just skating around urban environments or whatever. I always found them really boring. So, I immediately was like "ugh" with all the tricks.
But that's only half of it. The other half is combat. The premise of the game is that you're a new entry in this year's Rollerdrome tournament. In Rollerdrome, contestants are pitted against "house players," who try to disable the contestants. You have to eliminate all the house players to clear the level and move on in the tournament. You not only need to eliminate all the house players, but you need to complete various achievements (reach a certain high score, do certain types of tricks, kill enemies in certain ways, etc.) because subsequent rounds of the tournament are locked behind you having completed a certain number of achievements.
This all started out pretty fun for me, skating around, shooting people, dodging sniper fire. It quickly becomes really hard though, as new enemy types are introduced and there are more and more of them. It becomes something like a 3d bullet hell! Except in bullet hells, you can see everything because they're usually top-down. In this one, you'll get nailed from every angle, and you'll die constantly without knowing what hit you. You'll end up with four guns, two of which also have a sort of skill shot you can do. And you can dodge and slow time. Getting perfect dodges, doing tricks, grinding, etc. are how you refill your ammo. Killing enemies is how you refill your health. Doing both is how you rack up combo points. So, you cannot avoid doing tricks, or else you'll run out of ammo and there's no way you can dodge all the stuff flying at you for that long! Also, of the four heavily movement-focused games I have recently played, this one had the least fluid, least precise of them all (behind Neon White [which was perfect], Velocity 2x, and Solar Ash). It's hard not to compare.
I was going to quit in the semifinals because it was getting too hard for me and because the narrative is practically nonexistant, and therefore nothing else was motivating me, until I saw that I could turn on invincibility and infinite ammo. Well there we go! No regrets, I turned it on, plowed my way through the rest of the game, including the last boss fight, trying to get achievements without fear of dying, and had some fun before finishing. To the people who beat this without cheats, I am impressed! The final boss looked crazy.
I definitely thought this would be a bit different than it was. I expected less focus on arena combat and something more akin to roller derby or Rocket League (i.e., multiplayer). It is baffling to me that there is no multiplayer. This seems designed for it! And I always like a good racing combat game, so I admit to being disappointed that it wasn't roller derby with guns. That would have appealed to me more than Tony Hawk with guns.
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Jul 22nd, 2024 at 15:34:36 - Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (PC) |
Best looking game I've ever played. I hardly ever play new stuff, but thanks to Game Pass, I get to see brand new games! Seriously, you feel like you are walking over the volcanic rocks in Iceland, getting sprayed by ocean surf. The environment is amazing. The game has the most realistic rocks I've ever seen.
The sound design is also incredible. Wear headphones. As with the first game, the "furies" (the voices inside Senua's head) are in your left and right ear, respectively, and other audio is also directional and will "swirl" around your head. Some cool effects. I found the furies to be less hostile to Senua in this game compared to the first. That's probably due to the fact that she has accepted her psychosis and sees it more as a strength rather than something that terrifies her. Indeed, she becomes something of a leader in this game.
It's similar to the first game, but everything is refined. I re-read what I wrote 4 years ago, and I said that the combat and puzzles were tiring and frustrating. I had no problems with either in this one. I thoroughly enjoyed the combat and the puzzles. Combat may play largely the same, but it was more challenging than I recall, and it's really meaty. The puzzles may have been more straightforward than the previous game, where I said they were tedious. There aren't many of them, and most of them involve "focusing" on these spheres of liquid, which either hide or show various parts of the environment, revealing and concealing paths. You just have to figure out how to reveal where you need to go to line up the runes, like the last game. The game is linear, with side paths here and there for some additional lore.
The only possible negative thing I can say is that some segments of the game are incredibly slow. One part in particular, Senua is pulling herself through some rocks on her back. It was s-l-o-w and took probably two minutes for her to pull herself through. There were a few other really slow moments like that. And I get the point of it. She's struggling, it's building serious atmosphere, etc. But man, I wonder how much game time would be shaved off if she moved faster.
Anyway, I thought Hellblade II was incredible. The settings are jaw-dropping, the story is compelling, you're always moving forward. It sucked me right in.
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Jul 18th, 2024 at 15:05:46 - Solar Ash (PC) |
Another stylish one with fluid movement! Solar Ash, it turns out, is a lot like Shadow of the Colossus, except instead of riding a horse, you "skate." It's kind of like if Tony Hawk's Pro Skater were about killing giant monsters instead of doing sick tricks. You play as Rei, a Voidrunner who is trying to activate a device that will prevent her planet from being devoured by a black hole. Neat premise for sure.
You'll explore other planets with unique terrains that were already devastated. I think that each successive planet is more impressive than the one before it! One way Solar Ash impresses is by creating an awe-inspiring sense of scale. You are tiny little Rei, and you are in this giant area with interconnected destroyed planets, each with their own gravity. They've all been infected by "remnants," giant monsters which you need to destroy to progress.
Each planet has four or five smaller remnants and then a huge boss remnant. The smaller ones are all wrapped around buildings, and are timed platforming puzzles. The remnants have weak spots, and you have to skate/climb/jump around hitting the weak spots on timers before the remnant burns you. The bosses are like in Shadow of the Colossus. You climb up on them, then skate around knocking out those weak spots on timers, which is extra tricky because the boss is moving around. Some of them providing a tough challenge, and in a way it felt like playing Neon White in a sci-fi world because you have to hit each weak spot before a timer runs out--speedrunning the boss.
The movement and puzzle-platformy boss fights are where it's at. Narratively, the premise is interesting, but the presentation is a bit dense. I understood the broad picture, but the details, the side characters, didn't coalesce for me. I'm sure there is more there if I found all the logs and did the side quests, learned more about each planet and how its people tried to save them. The game tackles themes like grief and loss, but requires more unpacking than I felt like.
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Jul 17th, 2024 at 12:55:29 - Neon White (PC) |
This was fantastic! It's a speedrunning game with perfect movement, smooth as butter to play. I'm not a speedrunner or someone who tends to chase high scores, but everything about the design of Neon White motivated me to do it here, at least through chapter 7 or so until I just wanted to finish the game because I have so many others to get to on Game Pass before the month is out.
The gameplay is based around using cards, which you pick up during each level. You can hold up to two types of cards and three of each type at any given time. Left mouse uses the active card's primary ability (a gun of some sort) and right mouse uses its discard ability (a movement ability). For example, the green "stomp" card fires a machine gun with the left mouse and with the right mouse you fall quickly and stomp the ground (useful for killing enemies from above, smashing doors in the floor, or, well, falling quickly). The game almost always gives you the cards you need to use in order, such that you don't have to switch cards manually. I thought at the beginning I was going to be switching cards, but very rarely will you need to do this. Adding that pressure on top of an already lightning speed game might have broken my nerves. As it was, I couldn't play too long without taking a break!
Levels are short (I'd say they average 40 seconds or so, shorter in the beginning of the game and longer toward the end) and are worth playing again and again. If you finish, you get a bronze medal, and then there are silver, gold, and "ace" medals for getting better times. As you get better medals in each level, you'll be able to see the ghost of your best time, see a hint for shortcuts, see leaderboards, and see a collectible gift. The hints were neat. It doesn't just tell you or show you what to do; rather, there is a golden hand icon around where the shortcut is, and you still have to figure out what exactly to do there. The collectible gifts are in hard-to-reach places and involve deviating from the path or using your cards in ways unintended by the main path of the level (e.g., figuring out how to use the cards at your disposal to reach a gift that is on top of a spire).
I was feeling really good. Through chapter 7, I'd gotten nearly all ace medals and gifts. And once you get the hang of the game, you'll start to see shortcuts without being shown where they are. After chapter 7, when I stopped replaying levels, I still routinely got ace and gold on my first try, and then that faded to silver and bronze as the levels got more complicated closer to the end.
The gifts unlock special dialogue scenes and challenge levels for the other characters. The challenge levels were really neat. With one character, you can't use discard abilities in their challenge level. Another character's challenge levels were like deathtrap obstacle courses.
I enjoyed the story and characters too. You're all speedrunning and killing demons because you were all very bad in life, and now you're dead, in Heaven, cleaning it up and competing for prizes awarded by angels and "Believers," who are smug little angel/cherub creatures that run the place in the absence of God. You and the other main characters knew each other in life, and as you play through the game, you learn more about that. The characters reminded me of Disgaea or something, like silly JRPG or anime stuff. Of course, you all end up not being too excited about killing demons for the Believers as you learn more about the main characters and the Believers themselves. Everything is not as it appears...
Chalk this up as one that, in hindsight, I would have purchased on Steam to own instead of temporarily having access to on Game Pass. Ah, well! Maybe once a year, I can get some more ace medals!
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