Games You Beat in 2022: PXoD's Bogus Journey

[TheMightyEthan]

Also, with the bird rune grinding spot it doesn't really matter how much they cost.

[MetalCaveman]

It does take a while to get some of them though, in preparation for that, before starting NG+ I bought about 60 of each stone, including somber ones, which was kinda excessive given you only need one of those per level.

[TheMightyEthan]

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-

[MetalCaveman]

IIRC, there's some weird translation shenanigans going on with that ending, seems like in Japanese it makes more sense and is closer to a "good" ending than the others... Well, as close to a good ending as you can get in this kind of game at least.

Edited April 17, 2022 by MetalCaveman

[CorgiShinobi]

Yeah, the gist of it is that Ranni would rather an Order be removed from the land and exist far away so that it's very nature would be uncertain to the people. How it's translated makes it sound like nihilism. That there wouldn't be emotion and everything would be in doubt.

[TheMightyEthan]

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?"

[Mister Jack]

Spoiler

To put it in more direct terms, it seemed to me like Ranni wanted to separate mortals from gods so that the Lands Between would be responsible for its own destiny without the interference of the Greater Will while she would have the freedom to explore the cosmos without having to burden herself with being their goddess.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

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 

[TheMightyEthan]

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

[danielpholt]

On 4/23/2022 at 7:18 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

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 

 

 

It's been a few weeks since I finished Tunic and I'm finding it hard to disagree with Ethan here. Whilst I never had to fall back to no-fail mode I did end up using the guide towards the end to beat some of the more...abstract puzzles. And once I'd done that trick once, I found myself going back to it time and time again until I'd finished the game. 

 

That being said, I don't think that's a reason not to give it a look. It's a charming little game that deserves the attention it's been getting.

[TheMightyEthan]

1 minute ago, danielpholt said:

I did end up using the guide towards the end to beat some of the more...abstract puzzles. And once I'd done that trick once, I found myself going back to it time and time again until I'd finished the game.

 

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.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

there'e a new monnkey island game?!

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, TheFlyingGerbil said:

there'e a new monnkey island game?!

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Bridge Constructor Portal

 

This game is pretty much what it sounds like, a bridge building game but now you're thinking with portals. It's very excellently designed, with the difficulty curve smoothly increasing throughout the game without ever actually getting frustrating, and the writing lives up to the Portal legacy. It's everything I hoped it would be. Also, I played it all on my phone via Xcloud with my Razer Kishi, and it's the perfect game for that.

 

Great: A+

[TheMightyEthan]

Triangle Strategy

 

This was a fun little TBS RPG. I also loved the political intrigue, and how your choices affect it. It's basically like a PG-13 Game of Thrones, and it works surprisingly well. Some aspects of the political situation seem overly simplistic or naive, but if you accept those things as the driving factors then the actions of the individual groups make sense.

 

The combat was what you might expect from a turn-based strategy RPG, it did its job fine, but wasn't anything standout. The real star of the show is the story and your path through it.

The way you make story choices is interesting. You have your party, the main members of which are essentially a governing council, and they vote on what to do. Before each vote you can talk to them and try to sway them one way or the other to influence how the vote goes, via a three-pronged persuasion scale, called your "convictions", and additional options are opened by finding information in the world. The one gripe I have about it is even though you're the leader, you don't actually get a vote yourself, you can only try to persuade the others, which seems weird. Overall though it's a really cool idea, and I hope to see it expanded upon in other games.

 

Grade: B

[TheMightyEthan]

The Gunk

 

This is a fun little indie adventure platformer with a message that boils down to "destroying the planet = bad." Basically you and your partner land on this alien planet to investigate a mysterious energy signature, and discover everything is covered with this weird Gunk! And conveniently you have a vacuum for an arm! So you start sucking up the Gunk, and as you clear out each area you restore life to it and everything gets all green and pretty. And basically that's the game. There's some extremely light puzzle solving and combat, but pretty much you're vacuuming up Gunk. It sounds simple, and it is, but it's also very satisfying. It could have stood to change things up a little more, but the whole game is only like 4-5 hours so even if it gets kind of repetitive it doesn't overstay its welcome. I enjoyed my time with it, and it's on Game Pass, so if you are a subscriber I'd recommend checking it out, but I wouldn't recommend buying it.

 

Grade: B-

[Thursday Next]

On 5/3/2022 at 5:29 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

even though you're the leader, you don't actually get a vote yourself, you can only try to persuade the others, which seems weird

 

Sounds like politics. Executive proposes legislation and (in theory) persuades the legislative to vote for it. I know in practice Blue Leader proposes legislation and Blue team vote for it (unless they are actually Red team posing as Blue team) but I digress.

 

It's how separation of powers is supposed to work really...

[TheMightyEthan]

True, but this isn't a constitutional democracy, it's a hereditary nobility, and in actuality the decision would be down to what the MC wanted to do, he's just being nice by letting the others have a say. They're not even an actual official council or anything, just your friends whose opinions you value.

[MetalCaveman]

God Eater 2 Rage Burst

 

"what?... wait WHAT?!, I mean, WHAT!?!?!?!... WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!?"

 

That was my reaction to the ending, in GE the power of friendship overcame mutations once thought to be irreversible, this time it's managed to overcome

Spoiler

death itself.

 

Which came out of nowhere, one of the things that happened was expected, no surprise there, but then

Spoiler

Romeo shows up after being dead for a good chunk of the game

and THAT was a surprise.

 

This is one of those sequels that in part feels more like an expansion and also a regression, which may be caused by the original having had to re-releases, God Eater Burst and God Eater Resurrection, while this is the first time 2 has been re-released. Resurrection added predator styles, which allowed for different devour combinations and setups based on your weapons and playstyle, along with some weapon and weapon styles that are now also a part of 2.

 

Meanwhile, 2 not only uses several of the same maps and weapons, even HQ is the same after a certain story event that takes you back to Fenrir's Far East Branch. All this while removing Predator Styles, instead opting to go with Blood Arts, which enhance melee attacks, Blood Bullets which can add specific effects to bullets (like friend or foe detection, gravity based damage, etc.), and its main new mechanic, Blood Rage, which to me ended up feeling like too much risk, too little reward.

 

Basically you build up a gauge based on damage dealt and taken, when it reaches 100% you can activate Blood Rage, which then allows you to select and enemy and a series of pledges (conditions) to be fulfilled in order to activate it, this conditions range from Do X% of damage or hit X amount of times, all the way to having extremely low health or stamina, different conditions grant different damage bonus depending on the difficulty, the problem, and this is a problem with the entire game, is that the monsters here move so fast and so much that you can waste a full gauge just trying to keep up with the thing in order to fulfil the conditions, and once activated it only lasts for about a minute, of which you're likely to spend 30 seconds just chasing after your target. You can use traps or flash grenades to stun monsters for a bit, and AI teammates can be equipped with skills that help keep targets in place during Blood Rage, but even then it can be a pain depending on the monster in question, even more annoying when you're fighting multiple enemies. Having increased speed or something that could help close the distance faster would have been awesome.

 

Other than that though, the rest of the game plays very much like GER, and there's plenty of missions here to keep you busy for a while lol, story missions, free missions, character missions, emergency missions, some more challenging that others, some unlocking more skills for certain characters, though I said it felt like an expansion of GER it sill has more than enough content to stand on its own.

 

One thing that did disappoint me is that, in spite of the events of the previous game and the role your character had in it, this time around, when meeting or talking with returning characters, the most you get is "oh, you remind me of someone I used to know"... That's it... Kinda hurts.

 

Even with the issue I had at the end, where multi-stage battles got pretty annoying, GE2RB is a fun game, one that I'd def recommend if you're interested in the series. \m/ \m/

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Ghostwire: Tokyo

 

This game was pretty good, actually.  The game is really pretty, especially with raytracing on (mmmm, reflections...), and Tokyo is super detailed. The focus on yokai and kami and Japanese mythology in general was also a nice change from the kinds of urban fantasy you normally see in games.

 

The combat itself was fine, nothing amazing but nothing bad either (once I got the control settings properly adjusted), and the idea of fighting these spirits while trying to rescue your sister from a crazy guy who zapped everyone in Tokyo was pretty neat. I had fun with it while it lasted, and it was pretty short (about 10 hours) so it didn't overstay its welcome. I do think there's way too much open world nonsense, but you can safely skip pretty much all of it (I barely did any) and the result is a pretty cool singleplayer game.

 

Grade: B

[danielpholt]

Elden Ring 

 

My first experience with a Fromsoftware game, and I don't think it'll be my last. I've got a few issues with how the game presents it's world to the player (a journal with all my accomplishments/beaten enemies & dungeons would have been nice), and a few of the late-game bosses felt kinda bad to play against as a melee character, that aside however, I adore this game. 

 

Spare time is at an absolute premium for me right now, but I've still found a way to give the game over 100 hours in 5 weeks; it's totally taken over my free time in a way no game ever has; when I'm not playing it, I'm thinking about it. 

 

I know many consider Elden Ring to be significantly easier than other Soulsbourne games, given the fact that you can out-level bosses to assist along the way, but I'm super excited to dive into Sekaro when I get a chance, for now though, I'm probably going to dip in and out of the post-game stuff, toy with the idea of beginning a second journey (although I probably won't do that for a while). A truly incredible experience from front to back. 

[Mister Jack]

Going straight from the easiest From game to the hardest, huh? Bold of you.

[Thursday Next]

Sekiro and Elden are definitely the most different From games from each other. Elden is "do what you want, when you want, how you want" while Sekiro is a much more linear, curated experience (and arguably, more balanced for it). I love them both.

[TheMightyEthan]

Tales from the Borderlands

 

I feel like the Telltale formula kind of limits how good a game can really be, but within that formula this game was really good. I'm not a Borderlands fan by any means, but it was presented in a way where I didn't feel like I needed to be, and the writing had me laughing out loud multiple times per episode. I did feel like the second half of the last episode felt odd, like it didn't really fit with the arc of the story, but other than that I really liked it.

 

Grade: B+

[TheMightyEthan]

Sifu

 

This is a roguelite-lite where you play as a martial artist avenging your dead father/instructor. (I say roguelite-lite because the levels and enemy placement aren't random, they're the same every time, so it's not even a true roguelite.) It's got an interesting hook, where you have a magic talisman that brings you back to life each time you die, but you also age a number of years equal to the number of times you've died. So you start off at 20 and the first time you die you come back to life at 21, then the second time you add 2 more years so you're 23, third time you add 3 years so 26, and so on, though there are opportunities in the game to reduce or reset your death counter (but not your age). If you age past 78 you die altogether and have to restart that level. Your age also carries over from one level to the next, so basically you have to beat the whole game without aging past 78. Luckily there are only 5 levels, and you can go back and play any level any time you want though, to try to get a better age to carry into the next level.

 

There are also skills and that you unlock as you go. With skills if you unlock the same one 5 times in the same run then it's permanently unlocked even if you die or restart from the beginning, whereas upgrades are more like your age and you start each level with the upgrades you had at the end of the previous level.

 

That's all the central mechanic, but the core of the gameplay is the combat, and it feels great. You have the classic light & heavy attacks, along with blocks, parries, and dodges, and you can throw it all together into crazy combos that make you feel like a badass. The timing and execution can feel a bit weird at first, but once you get used to it everything starts to flow and it just feels so good to play. Fundamentally it's the modern interpretation of those old beat-em-up games like the Ninja Turtles games from the 90's. It also has crazy replayability. I beat it in just over 6 hours, and I've already spent another 6 hours doing the optional objectives and trying to beat it with a lower age. I do have a few nitpicks, changes I would make to the progression system, that kind of thing, but none of it detracts from how much fun it is to play. I definitely recommend it for anyone who likes oldschool beat-em-ups or just fast action games in general.

 

Grade: A