Category Archives: Uncategorized

#81 – Hue

Puzzle games are not for me. They have never been for me, and they will probably never be for me either. All too often they blur the line between challenging and frustrating, and I just don’t have the patience for frustrating that I used to. Getting stuck in one place where I could be doing something more fun and rewarding just isn’t appealing, and that seems to be what puzzle games are all about – bashing your head against a brick wall until you figure it out, when the solution is never really all that obvious.

Most of the time, anyway.

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Special #1 – Top 5 games of 2020

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It’s fairly unlikely that I’ll finish anything else this year, being a mere 50 hours into my Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition replay whilst I struggle to make time for Immortals: Fenyx Rising and toy with the idea that I might get to play Control somewhen. So now is as good a time as any to write my first special entry – the five games I enjoyed the most this year! Only games released this year make the list.

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Pokémon Fire Red

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I can vaguely recall how overwhelmingly excited I was when I first booted up my copy of Pokemon Red when I was nine years old…a sensation I did not get when I booted this game up for the first time, as I was fourteen years old, trying desperately to hide the fact that I still played Pokemon games to my classmates, and I…did not get along with Ruby. I didn’t think playing through Kanto was going to change my mind or anyone else’s, and it didn’t.

But for a challenge run, better this than the originals or the Let’s Go titles. So, away we go!

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Project Kat

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Don’t you hate it when things just end? There’s nothing worse than getting really immersed in something, only to have it suddenly just stop. Even if there is a good reason behind it, it’s still one of the more annoying things that can happen, especially when you’re playing a video game.

Yep, this is another one of those.

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RemiLore

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I buy a fair number of video games in sales. This is mostly because if I bought everything I wanted to try at full price I’d probably bankrupt myself, and I know what I’m *really* interested in a lot of the time. But sometimes I wonder if I have a sixth sense of sorts – like I know something is going to be bad, but I can’t quite believe it, so I’ll wait for a sale to confirm it. That way, when my suspicions are confirmed, I won’t feel too bad for wasting money on it.

…doesn’t really work though. I still feel bad for wasting money and time on this.

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Megaman X

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This is the first Megaman title I’ve played in nearly 18 years, the second one I’ve played overall, and the first I’ve actually finished. After an absolutely disastrous experience with Megaman Zero on the Gameboy Advance (which I am very much looking forward to trying again when I get the ZX collection on Switch, masochist that I am) I swore off this franchise for years. There is hard, and then there is unfair, and Megaman seemed to blur the line to the point that every death was a personal slight.

Well, I’m thirty now. I can handle a bit of frustration. Hahaha.

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Secret of Mana

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One thing I have never liked about the video game industry is its glorification of “classic” titles, which may or may not even hold up particularly well by today’s standards. It’s like a QoL blindfold is put over people’s eyes when it comes to improvements made on the original formula. The original is the best, no ifs, ands, or buts. The games that were amazing back then are still amazing, even if their gameplay has been improved upon thanks to new innovations and existing hardware. He who does it first, does it best. It’s an attitude I really cannot get behind, and one that irritates me every time it comes up in conversation…and it inevitably does, because people just LOVE their nostalgia.

Don’t get me wrong here, I do too…well, to some extent. It is important to understand video game history, and where these ideas and trends originate. But what is NOT acceptable, or realistic, is putting the origin of these ideas up on a pedestal as the best example of the medium.

Fans of Secret of Mana, look away now.

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Batman: The Enemy Within

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Controversial opinion time: The Enemy Within is the best Telltale game ever made. Better than The Walking Dead (although not by much when it comes to the second season in particular) and significantly better than the rest of them.

Controversial opinion time #2: John Doe is the best Joker not voiced by Mark Hamill.

Yeah, I fucking love this game.

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Batman: The Telltale Series

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I am probably not as knowledgeable about Batman as I ought to be. Growing up with the 90s animated series should have made me a fan of the comics as well really, but I was very much a Marvel comics fan, and with subsequent Batman media being very hit-and-miss (Gotham, The Batman, select episodes of Brave and the Bold, and the one-off DC animated movies were amazing, the rest – and yes, I include Nolan’s trilogy in this – were trash) I’ve never really been as huge of a fan as I might have otherwise been if Marvel didn’t have better comics during the 90s and cartoons that were at least on-par.

…come on, everyone knows the 90s X-Men theme. You know I’ve got a point.

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Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk DX

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It’s not very often I triple dip with games, although with the Dusk trilogy, much like the Arland trilogy (which I STILL haven’t played on Switch…fuck, I’ve never even played Rorona Plus!) I made an exception, because I love these games.

When JRPGs that require you to save the world are a dime a dozen, and laid-back simulator games are so DAMN BORING (I’m sorry, but they are) it’s nice to have a series that takes the best parts of both and blends them together to create something that, whilst not always relaxing (goddamn time limits and event triggers…) is a lot more laid back than your typical JRPG these days. The domesticity of the Atelier franchise has always appealed to me, and despite the appalling (digital-only in the West!) price, I wasn’t about to pass these up…not when I had £40 in gold points, anyway.

…it’s a shame Koei Tecmo now have control of Gust and are fucking it all up, but I’ll always have the games up to and (mostly) including the Dusk trilogy.

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