TheMightyEthan

Returnal: Tower of Sisyphus Goddamn this game just plays so good. The Tower is basically a more contained version of the main game, just without branching paths and the ability to go backwards. It's really reminding me just how solid the moment-to-moment gameplay in this game is, it's such a joy to play, and the added story content is keeping me hooked.

Yeah, this is my problem with "guide dangit" elements in games, once you go to a guide the first time it's like a dam's been broken and it's so easy to fall into just following the guide. I had a similar problem with some of Elden Ring's sidequests, which is why I wish the game gave you just a little more to go on. I was actually reading an article yesterday about the new Monkey Island game, and it sounds like they really understand that, and are adding a hint system to try to avoid players going to guides in the first place.

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/04/25/variable-refresh-rate-support-for-ps5-is-rolling-out-this-week/ VRR! Fucking finally! Now I can play Ghostwire...

Aperture Desk Job This is a little tutorial for the Steam Deck, but you can play it on any computer. I'd heard it was funny, so I gave it a shot, and it was! As a game it really wasn't anything, it was a controller tutorial, but it was pretty funny, and it's like 20 minutes long, so I still recommend it if you like the Portal universe. Grade: C as a game, A+ for writing

Tunic This game is a really hard game to rate. A lot of what it does it does really, really well, and is really cool, but there's other stuff where it just falls flat on its face, and I don't know how the two balance out. First, the good. This game is charming as fuck, probably one of the prettiest games I've ever played. It's going for the feeling of an old-school Zelda (but without the pixel art) and nails it. It also feels really good to play, keeping the tough feel of those old games while still managing to be very fast and responsive. The most standout thing though is the instruction manual. Throughout the game you find pages of an old style instruction manual, complete with handwritten notes in pen the previous player made. The manual is mostly written in an unknown runic language, but gives you hints to mechanics and what you should be working on. It's a very cool concept, and really well done. The levels are also very smartly designed, with lots of interconnectedness in ways that isn't obvious until you've been through it and come out somewhere and suddenly realize there's a hidden passage where you could have gone in through if you'd only known it was there. It's really neat and well thought out. That's actually a theme throughout the game, the game is gated primarily through information given to the player, and not through actually restricting what you're capable of. For instance, with the fast travel system (no spoilers), you could have been making use of it from the start, but you don't know to until you get the appropriate manual page that tells you what to do, then you realize you've been seeing the fast travel stations everywhere. Like everything else, it's super clever. Which brings me to the negatives: sometimes the game goes past clever and falls over into obtuse. I ended up using a guide at the end, because even with the manual I don't see how I was supposed to have figured some of this stuff out. Also, a couple of the boss fights I don't understand how they're supposed to be possible without using the game's no-fail mode. One in particular that is a flying boss in a game where you don't really have good access to ranged attacks. It's great that there's a no-fail setting in the accessibility menu, but sometimes I think the game used it as too much of a crutch. (A more minor but related complaint: I wish it weren't all or nothing with no-fail either on or off, I wish there were ways to scale damage taken or something, but alas, there is not). There's also a large area toward the end with a really irritating design aspect that I won't spoil here. Again, no-fail mode saves it a to some extent, but that shouldn't be necessary. I'm just left asking, who thought this was a good idea? All in all, I really like this game, and do highly recommend it, just with the caveat that you may need to use no-fail to get through some parts, or a guide to figure out what you need to be doing next. It's a really special game, and is really good, but with a couple minor tweaks I feel like it could have been truly spectacular. Grade: B+ but with a

Because it's Nintendo.

Yeah, I didn't properly prepare for NG+ because I just needed to start it to run and get the last legendary armament, so I'll probably regret that if/when DLC comes out. It was nice to wreck the starting area boss though.

If it makes you feel better I save-scummed the three ending achievements so I didn't have to beat it three times, just once.

I did it!

And of course I'm learning all this after I did everything except get the last few legendary items...

lol, I didn't even get that much out of it. I'm sitting behind her during the end like "Oh, yeah, Age of Stars, huh? Sounds good, sounds good... so what does that mean?"

Yeah, no kidding, now that I know I can hold it down it devours my mana pool, though I'm already almost to the first Mind soft cap.

I hadn't really been following this game, but that gameplay looks so fucking good. They really nailed the "what you remember 16-bit looking like" aesthetic.

lol, now I'm really glad I did that fight the night before the patch.

The MJ sections in Spider-Man didn't bother me much. It would have been better if they weren't there, but they weren't hard. It's when there's mandatory stealth, and it's badly done, and you keep failing over and over that it gets really bad.

I never knew being a watch nerd was a thing.

Yeah, unless your game is designed entirely around stealth then don't force stealth sections.

The Medium I was liking this game fine enough, nothing amazing, but fine, but I was mildly interested in the spooky ghost stuff. Then I got to this stupid mandatory stealth boss thing, and after failing several times in a row I decided I wasn't liking the rest of the game enough to put up with this shit. I will say the character designs and setting, an old abandoned Soviet Worker's Resort, were great. Not something I see all the time, and really well done. Grade: C-

WHY DIDN'T YOU GUYS TELL ME THAT IF YOU HOLD DOWN THE BUTTON ON AZUR COMET IT KEEPS GOING?!

lol, except I beat it using fly swarm, which got nerfed. I'll take it though.

Spell casting speed has been buffed too.

Quick resume kept fucking up for me, it could never reconnect to the servers afterwards, even if I quit out to the menu first. I took to saving and quitting and then manually closing the game through the guide every time I finished playing.

Elden Ring This game is great. I still think its 97 metacritic is inflated, and still think that's likely because outlets gave it to their resident From fan for reviews, but it is a great game and I don't want to take away from that. Combat feels good to do, and rarely did I find an encounter frustrating. I also really like the layers of strategy, both with your resource management while moving between sites of grace, and your time management within each fight. The fact that you can't interrupt your attack animations to dodge sounds like it would be aggravating, but once you get used to it it just means you need to be careful and pick your moments instead of just spamming the attack button. It's very satisfying. I do wish there was some kind of in-game quest tracking, the current system encourages just using guides too much, but I've already talked about that on here. I also wish there was a little more story presentation in the actual game, instead of making you dig through item descriptions and stuff to find it. Like, I got the Age of Stars ending, and I don't actually know what happened. It was like a 30 second cutscene and that was it. All in all though, this is a really good game, and I recommend anyone who is interested give it a try, even if you haven't liked other From games. I'd previously tried Dark Souls 1, 2, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, and I didn't make it past the first boss in any of them, but Elden Ring hooked me. Grade: A-

Pro tip that took me forever to figure out and I think will especially benefit you with kids: you don't have to get to a site of grace to save and quit, you can do it anywhere as long as you're not in combat.

I'm trying and failing to come up with some kind of worm/spice pun, so I'll just say those are fucking badass.