Hey y’all, I am currently having a hard time writing about video games, so to break the block I’m just gonna straightforwardly tell you about some games I’ve played recently and, like, basic thoughts about them. I hope to be back at it normally again soon. Probably with a post about Destiny 2, though, let’s be honest with ourselves.
Open Roads
Set in the early 2000s against a backdrop of Web 1.0 and the advent of cellphones, this short narrative adventure game sends protagonist Tess Devine and her mother Opal (voiced by Kaitlyn Dever and Keri Russell, respectively) on a journey across the Midwest to discover the truth about Opal’s parents. The dialogue and voice acting are pretty good, but I thought the actual exploring – rooting around in attics and basements, wandering through abandoned trailer homes and houseboats – was kind of clunky and not super engaging. That said, good for the “Open Roads Team” on getting out from under Steve Gaynor’s shitty behavior and releasing their game in partnership with Annapurna.
Botany Manor
Botany Manor, as a point-and-click adventure game, provided a satisfying three-to-five hours of plant-based puzzle-solving amidst a story about Victorian-era feminist struggles of a female botanist to be recognized as a valid member of academia. The story ends on kind of an odd note, with the work we/the main character, Arabella Greene, do to record a variety of plants and their uses getting rejected as a book but with Greene starting a girls’ botany school in the manor library. Despite that, it was still a pretty good offering from Balloon Studios.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
I really enjoyed most of what I experienced in Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, the debut title from Surgent Studios and actor-turned-dev Abubakar Salim. I loved the art and environmental design, I loved the voice acting, I loved the story, I loved how traversal felt – but I didn’t really love the combat all that much, finding the frequent skill-check areas to be annoying enough to really get under my skin after about eight hours of play. There are two sections in particular with genuinely unfair checkpointing that make you essentially do a whole movement run with different abilities perfectly, and while I eventually managed to complete them, they still got my ass. Aside from that: excellent game, would recommend.
The [redacted] part of Dragon’s Dogma II
I feel like I have a lot to say about the way Dragon’s Dogma II preemptively deals with criticisms that it was basically a carbon copy of Dragon’s Dogma with some proper nouns changed around, but every time I try to write my thoughts out, the effort falls flat. To be clear there’s a lot going on in the ending to Dragon’s Dogma II, various statements being made about authorship and audiences and expectations, but in the moment as I was playing I mostly just felt overwhelmed by the sheer spectacle of it all. It is a philosophical rebuttal of fandom in a lot of ways, masked by the sheer shonen anime-ass nature of the final battle. All I can really say right now is, “fuck the Pathfinder.”
Lil’ Guardsman
This game, from Hilltop Studios, is a trip. I haven’t completed it (or gone back to it since March… I’m bad at sticking with video games as it turns out), but its gameplay loop is kind of wild! You play as a child who has been gang-pressed into working as a gate guard, time travel is involved, and there’s a lot of shady shit happening in the background that immediately piqued my interest. The writing is often very funny, and the animation style is super memorable. Definitely one I want to get back to.
Lucah: Born of a Dream/Death of a Wish
Everything about these two games, from indie dev melessthanthree, has been screaming out to me to play them for a long, long-ass time. I got code for Death of a Wish a solid year ago, it feels like, and I’ve only just now cracked open its predecessor to look inside. These games feel daunting to me. They might end up being my Dark Souls. I absolutely need to dive deeper into these games (alongside other titles like The Book Walker and Jett: The Far Shore). It’s going to have to come down to me MAKING time.
Pacific Drive
I thought I would enjoy Pacific Drive a lot more than I have been. It’s so clear Ironwood Studios has made something special here, but I find myself bouncing off the complicated mechanics and panic-inducing environmental hazards in a way I never expected I would. It’s a game for true sickos, and it’s clear that I’m not the kind of sicko that gets maximal enjoyment out of this. Maybe I’ll come back to it and change some of the difficulty settings to get the full story, which out of everything else I loved.
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist
Area Gamer Who Has Only Played Nier: Automata: “Getting a lot of Nier: Automata vibes from this.” Ender Magnolia is another game I got code for that I’m very intrigued by but haven’t had a chance to really dig into. A Metroidvania-style action-platformer set in a post-apocalyptic world where android-like “homunculi” and humans live separately, Ender Magnolia is a game I aim to get to more in-depth this summer.
Hades II Early Access
It’s more Hades. It’s more Supergiant. I’m VERY bad at it rn. The game is EXTREMELY horny. That is all I have for you right now. What else is there to say?
Little Kitty, Big City
I am juuuuust about five minutes into Little Kitty, Big City, a game where you are a cat trying to get home, and it’s very good. I’ve seen it described as a cross between Stray and Untitled Goose Game, and yeah. Yep. It sure is.
Honorable Mentions/Things I want to play:
- Another Crab’s Treasure
- Life Eater
- Harold Halibut
- Have a Nice Death
- The Rewinder
- 1000xResist
- Crow Country
- Animal Well
Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been playing/have barely touched/want to play. Hopefully this broke the block, or at least formed a crack in its carapace, and I’ll be able to write more fully on stuff I’ve played/am playing soon. Enjoy your week in the meantime!