Reviews

Tux and Fanny – A Review

by

Listen. You think you’re cool enough to be into Tux and Fanny? You’re probably not. Me neither.

But I will tell you all about it. This shit is wacky af. It starts with a soft spot for me, these two pixelated bamas want to kick around a soccer ball in their front yard.

Where do they think they are? PG County? I love it.

I easily (and purposely) get distracted by a million other side quests. Just to give you a spoiler alert, I loved this game. It made little sense, but rarely disappointed.

To set the scene, you are a weird Gumbo-like ?alien? living in a house with your bestie/alien brethren.

Sweet side note of this game, you can alternate between playing Tux OR Fanny, I know! Mind blown!, or a random punkass cat or meddlesome flea.

Everybody dance now.

The creativity is not spared in this game, the side quests are seemingly endless. To the point that every once in a while I got frustrated that I didn’t know the exact song to play for the seagulls on the roof. →  Ratchet & Read

Nier Automata is No Nier Gestalt

by

Folks, I tried to play Nier: Automata. I really did. But I don’t think I have it in me to finish it.

As someone who counts the original Nier as one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time, I’m as disappointed as anyone that the sequel to that experience fell short, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Here now are some of the problems I had with the game:

The Intro is BS

The introduction to the game can take up to 40 minutes to get through. At no point during those 40 minutes are you allowed to save the game. If you die, you start all over again.

The saving grace is that you can adjust the difficulty at any time, so there’s nothing stopping you from dropping to easy mode just to breeze through it all (easy mode lets you “auto battle,” where the game will automatically dodge and pick the best attacks for you). But it still feels like a bad design decision that could have been easily avoided. →  Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Post

Review – Tyranny

by
Currently playing: Master of Magic

Not long ago – it feels like yesterday – I put Tyranny on my New Year’s resolution list.  It’s still 2022, right?  I’m happy to report that I completed Tyranny.  I’m not sure I’m happy that I chose it for my list.  It looks unique, and starts out feeling different from other CRPGs, but by the end it feels like a reskin of other games.

Tyranny starts out on a high note – the animated style of the narration and Conquest portion of character creation mesh to give a very different feel from the typical beginning of a CRPG.  The backstory (fleshed out in Conquest), in which you are effectively middle management for the conquering despot Kyros, also feels fresh.  Not enough games have you start as middle management, assigned to a failing project and expected to turn it around.  I’m still left waiting, however, for a CRPG that features a lengthy change control board meeting (where you need to pass a skill check to stay awake). →  I’ll get a job later, for now I’m going to read this

Some Itch.io Game Reviews

by

Around a year ago, I joined a fortnight-ly Itch.io game club after picking up the Palestinian Aid Bundle.  The club leader would post a (semi-curated) random game, and everyone would play through it.

The large itch.io bundles are perfect for buying entirely more games (and sprites, and rulebooks, and engines) than you need, while feeling like you’re helping to make the world a less terrible place.  It’s the perfect way to build up a crushing, overwhelming backlog and get some unusual games without a large investment.

Here’s a sampling of the games I played and enjoyed from the bundle:

Closed Hands 

This is an interesting visual novel about a terrorist attack in the UK and political/social reactions to it, told from five different perspectives.  The timeline varies by perspective, and each perspective is (typically) linear in one direction or the other, so you have a fair amount of freedom about whether you want to go forward or backwards in time.  →  Get lame or get out.

Thoughts on Wasteland 3 from Quarantine

by

As I sit here in the few hours of peace I will have today, and maybe this week, I must consider how best to populate this site with content. Some goober in my kids’ day care was diagnosed with COVID last week, and in what I would consider an abundance of caution (and I am generally for more money spent, more masking, more testing, more boosters, more lockdowns, and more bleach drinking) the school has closed for the week. So we have 10 days without day care despite the kids not being sick (after copious testing, at least). Anyway, life sucks at the moment but here are some thoughts on Wasteland 3.

CRPGs

I really like this genre. Why do I play other games between finishing every good PC RPG? I don’t know, good question. After this maybe I’ll play Pillars of Eternity 2 or Tyranny. Theoretically, jumping between genres and consoles helps prevent burn out. This is a good theory because while I am enjoying Wasteland 3, some large number of hours in (I leave it running constantly so Steam’s clock isn’t useful), I am getting a bit bored of the overall loop. →  Jesus: Readful Bio Monster

Resident Evil 3 Remake Review

by

The 2020 remake of Resident Evil 3 is one of the most disappointing games I’ve encountered in years. It is the very definition of a cash grab, and now that it’s out, it’s doubtful we’ll ever get a version of this game that reaches its full potential.

But before we get into the game proper, we should start with a little history lesson.

A History of Stalkers

The original Resident Evil 2 not only featured two playable characters, but also two different story scenarios. In one of the scenarios, the player character is stalked by a Tyrant popularly known as “Mr. X.” He’ll show up to attack you in certain rooms, and is both stronger and faster than regular zombies. However, just like any other enemy, he can’t follow you through doors.

All in all, Mr. X wasn’t that much of an additional threat, but he planted the seed for the idea of a semi-persistent threat that stalks the player throughout the story. →  [link only works on even seconds]

Triangle Strategy is Better than Fire Emblem: Three Houses

by

For no apparent reason, I have pitted (often unrelated) things against each other since I was a child. Well, probably for deeply disturbing psychological reasons. Sega had to be universally better than Nintendo, chocolate better than vanilla, coffee better than tea, and orange juice with pulp truer to nature than that pulp-free orange water drink. No Country for Old Men is a better movie than There Will Be Blood, and Shenmue is just superior to Yakuza. In a weird variant of this psychosis, I once told a friend that Meshuggah should be a melodic metal band like the other bands from Sweden and not whatever rhythm based, incorrect metal they were. Lines must be drawn and sides must be taken, damn it.

It is in this spirit I bring you a comparison between Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Triangle Strategy. Both are SRPGs (tactical RPGs according to Chris, who has chosen different battles to fight than I) on the Switch. Both tell grand stories and are something of a throwback (one of them deliberately, the other because it kind of just looks shitty). →  I’d buy that for a dollar.

Review – Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising

by
Currently playing: Tyranny

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a “companion game” to the core game Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, which is still in development. Hundred Heroes is a Kickstarter headlined by Yoshitaka Murayama (story) and Junko Kawano (art), veterans of the original Suikoden. The Kickstarter is clearly designed to invoke the feel of the Suikoden series. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising serves as a kind of teaser for the game world as well as a standalone, relatively casual, action RPG. As a teaser for a future game, it works reasonably well. Isolated from that context, I’m not sure it’s a great action RPG, although I did enjoy it.

As Jay observed in a comment on a prior post, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is similar to Ys III (not just because many of the environments line up – that’s just a happy coincidence). It’s a simple action RPG focused around exploration and resource collection. Although you get a few extra character mechanics over time, and you unlock additional party members, the pace and structure of the game incentivize you to play as main character CJ much of the time. →  Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Post

White Flag – Giving up on Saga Scarlet Grace and Monster Train

by

I recently came to the conclusion that only chumps play every game until completion. And so here is the first entry in what will likely be a long, if not entertaining, series of posts on games I gave up on. I got lucky in that both are very good games that just couldn’t hold my attention until the credits rolled.

Saga Scarlet Grace: Ambitions

Scarlet Grace is the best Saga game I have played, which is similar to being the smartest Qanon believer. The series has managed to improve in stature amongst people who care about long running JRPGs, no doubt assisted by Jeremy Parish’s constant Kawazu fawning. I am happy the games exist because having something weird and different is preferable to not having it, but the games do not really come together from what I have experienced. Yet in a twist I did not see coming, Scarlet Grace is actually pretty good.

The game is like a nice gift wrapped in the obituary section of a newspaper – combat is a lot of fun, but the plot, characters, and questing is all off putting. →  Lose belly fat now!

On the Rejection of Writing Formal Game Reviews

by
Currently playing: Grim Fandango

Being a magnanimous business owner (of videolamer Corporate Consolidated Holdings LLC), I allowed Editor in Chief Pat to take a week off for vacation with his family on the condition he return with a Panzer Dragoon Saga write-up. This means that there is no one here to make my writing less bad or to talk me out of posting short, pointless, half-formed thoughts. So enjoy this one while you can.

In this site’s first run from 2005-2011ish I reviewed some games. Being in my 20s, I didn’t put much thought into my qualifications – I had a keyboard, a poorly reasoned and loud opinion, and an internet. All the pieces were there for insightful critique, as far as I could tell. The game industry was also smaller in those days and it was possible for a single person to comprehend huge chunks of context, history, game design lineage, developer and studio formation and attrition, and so on. So I had the confidence of youth and actually knew a pretty good amount about video games and the industry. →  OutRun 2006: Post to Post