Thirith on 5/9/2020 at 18:52
Just finished playing through the sweet little Wide Ocean Big Jacket. At the beginning I thought that while it was cute, it may also be too slight for its own good, but it ended up having a couple of moments that surprised me, and there's nothing wrong with being little and sweet and heartfelt. Definitely something I could use more of in 2020.
henke on 7/9/2020 at 15:03
I've mostly been playing Pro Gymnast this past week. It's a physics-based dealio like Stilt Fella but much harder to master (not that I'm the best judge of that). The slo-mo mode helps a lot. But even when you're playing terribly it's a lot of fun.
And since it has a built-in replay editor of course I had to put together a compilation of my greatest hits (and misses).
[video=youtube;7ETQXlVP-Ns]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ETQXlVP-Ns[/video]
Anarchic Fox on 8/9/2020 at 04:20
Icemann, later on in Swords of Ditto you do unlock things that improve later playthroughs. However, when I played it I felt like the game had little respect for my time, so I turned aside fairly soon.
Speaking of which... Timespinner, a metroidvania leaning very heavily on the Castlevania side of the monicker, could have been one of the greats if its level design were tighter and its premise better-explored. Sure, SotN had long, repetitive corridors and stairways, but that's because it had to piece together a sprawling castle. Timespinner has long, repetitive rooms without any such justification: its two main maps are laid out in long horizontal lines. However, the enemy and movement design were solid, the boss fights fun though uneven in difficulty, and the weapon system was fun to experiment with. The plot was decent, but made too little use of its own premise. You start out on Winderia, which has a time-travel artifact... which you use to visit two other worlds, learning all about their mutual history while neglecting the backstory of Winderia and its artifact. More, a great time-travel game like Chronotrigger visits many different time periods, with the effect that showing up in unexpected times can be plot twists all on their own. (This plot twist happens three times in Chronotrigger, by my count.) In Timespinner, you visit... two eras of time. Huh.
I quite enjoyed the game, enough to invest the time and effort to get the hard ending, but the game's flaws make it hard to recommend it to anyone except metroidvania fans.
henke on 10/9/2020 at 18:04
Ori and the Blind Forest - Very slick, but the narrative ain't pulling me in and for some reason I'm having a hard time reading the enemy attacks and end up dying a lot even tho I'm just playing on Normal. I dunno man. I'm not feeling it.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Not feeling this one either. Didn't even make it off the boat. Uninstalled.
Sludge Life - Pretty trippy and very chill first person exploration game. I got one of the endings already but I might go back in and see what else I find.
Wheels of Aurelia - Driving and talking game. The driving is very poor tho. Talking's ok I guess? The themesong is rockin'. But really, I'm not gonna bother playing further.
The Textorcist - Quite unique typing/bullethell game. Better as an idea than as an actual game tho.
Action Super Cross - When I found out that Elastomania came out in 2000 I thought that was weird because I was sure I played it in the 90's. Turns out this is what I played in the 90's. Still good fun and I'd certainly recommend this and the Elastomanias to anyone who's into physics-based arcade games!
Desperados 3 - I'm like 8 missions in. It's not grabbing me like Shadow Tactics did. Eh, let's see where it goes.
Ghost of Tsushima - Yeah I'm not really feeling this one either. Just feels like every other open world stealth-action game. I've made it to the second area, but I have zero motivation to keep playing.
Spaß Taxi - This is a remake of some obscure German game from the 90's. You fly a taxi and deliver fares between stations. 2D sideview. Feels like it was made by programmers, not game designers. Has more systems than you'd expect. Weird and fun.
Harvester on 10/9/2020 at 20:52
Played Night In The Woods. It's not much of a 'game' per se, but I liked the characters, offbeat humor and its themes, found a lot of it relatable and even meaningful without it becoming heavy-handed.
Might even play it again someday and make different choices and see more of the stuff I missed.
Tony_Tarantula on 11/9/2020 at 11:45
SIN was great but they probably should gone down the humor and edginess. The original game had a lot of outdated stylistic elements designed to the kind of teenager who plays Warhammer (back when it was really edgy). Unfortunately that kind of “edgy for the sake of it” humor is problematic in 2020 and the game should be updated to reflect progress
Thirith on 11/9/2020 at 13:30
This morning I not only finished
The Last of Us 2 (more on that in the game-specific thread), I also played through the second one of Octavi Navarro's
Twilight Zone-alike
Midnight Scenes P&C shorts,
The Goodbye Note. Like the previous one, this is a perfectly executed exercise in tone and style: the game looks like the lovechild of a LucasArts adventure and a '50s B&W sci-fi horror series. There isn't much in the way of puzzles in the game, and the puzzles that are there are simple, but I still very much enjoyed this half-hour game for nailing a particular tone. Differently from the more ironic
Twilight Zone, the ending's somewhat huh?, but I'd still recommend this to anyone who likes this particular aesthetic and style of storytelling.
Inline Image:
https://www.freegameplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Midnight-Scenes-The-Goodbye-Note-game-download.gif
PigLick on 11/9/2020 at 16:43
That looks really cool, where can you get it?
Thirith on 11/9/2020 at 20:18
It's available on Steam. Possibly also on itch.io. If I remember correctly, one or two of Navarro's games on Steam are free, if you want to check out his style first.