July/September 2019 Update

I’m pretty surprised I managed to get here, I didn’t expect to survive the 179 heat waves in this crazy summer but I guess it was destiny, I couldn’t die without getting fully caught up with my BLAEO updates. guess I’ll die now? >_>

Numerically-wise most of the backlog slaying this month has been in the month of August, thanks in part to the monthly theme and in part to my newfound resolve in finally clearing up my ABC Challenge list (only one to go ^o^). Speaking of which, I prepared a second semi-WIP list which already has 2 kills on it, so yay me :3

NieR:Automata™

41 hours playtime, 47 of 47 achievements (100%)

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Just go play it. Seriously. Go. Now. "But I already played until X" you say? No. It doesn't count. Go back and play it. I'll be waiting.

When talking about Sekiro in the last update I made sure to call it my GOTY as far as 2019 releases go.
It was a bit of a cheeky spoiler/foreshadowing because at the time of writing I had already played NieR, and I'm 100% sure it's the best game I've played - and I'll play - for this year.

I don't want to call it my favourite game of all time only because I don't believe it's fair to choose a single game to give that "award" to, but I'd say it's one of my all-time favourites, a masterpiece deserving of the title of classic that should be a must play for people interested in what can be achieved through the videogame medium.


Oxenfree

7 hours playtime, 5 of 13 achievements (38%)

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It feels like this is one of the games I put off the longest, always thinking "hey, I heard it's great and I should play it" but never actually going through with it. I actually started it a long time ago but just dropped it very early, so the Unfinished Business theme was a blessing :p

I'm happy I finally got to play it as I liked pretty much everything about it, from the story to the setting to the characters and the interactions between them.
I had a very good time getting to around 80-85% to the end but the last part kind of ruined it for me, so at the end I felt no drive whatsoever to go back and play the game again as I originally intended.

A bit of a bummer, but I enjoyed my time with it.


Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

10.5 hours playtime, 31 of 65 achievements (48%)

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If you have to choose just one Shantae game to play just stay away from this one and go play Pirate's Curse instead. It sounds a bit harsh but the reality is that I was pretty disappointed by Half-Genie Hero after loving the other 2 episodes of the series available on PC.

The game starts well but suddenly turns into a neverending fetch quest which has you repeatedly go back and forth between "beaten" levels and new areas to get this or that item to forward the story.

It really, really feels like it's been done to mask the low amount of actual content present in the game and it leaves a bad aftertaste, thinking what could have been. After all, the presentation is amazing, the quirky story and characters are all there and the OST has some of the best tracks in the series. grumble grumble :(


Zenith

9.5 hours playtime, 12 of 12 achievements (100%)

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Frankly speaking the only reason I even played this game was because its name started with Z and I needed the letter for my ABC challenge. I'll be blunt: Zenith is not a good game.

The presentation looks straight out of the early to mid 2000s, the controls and gameplay are serviceable at best and you'll be left wondering how on Earth a game launched in 2016 can have such a lackluster options menu. Looking at the middling 57 on Metacritic you'll also wonder why this is in a section that I usually reserve to games that have something remarkable about them: why am I writing about it at all? Spoiler alert: I loved it!

From looking at the store page description and screenshots I honestly anticipated to find some forced jokes here and there, fully expecting to be put off by some cringy attempt to be funny and abandon the game after an hour or so. What I found instead was some amazing writing, with a Monty Python-esque humour made of funny characters and non sequiturs, with a metric ton of videogame/movie references and meta-jokes that made me play half of the game grinning from ear to ear. The plot was surprisingly good as well, simple but with enough plot twists and a satisfying conclusion.

I'm conflicted about whether or not to recommend it, as the humour can be a personal thing and frankly there's no other reason to play it :/


Blasphemous

17.1 hours playtime, 30 of 45 achievements (67%)

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One of the weird thing about having a comically large wishlist on Steam is that I often don't look into new WL releases enough to assess whether or not I'd want to pick up a game at release. In an alternate world where I hadn't bought Blasphemous right away, I would have probably acquired it in some bundle 2 years from now and proceeded to ignore it, until a BLAEO theme made me look back to it. Luckily for me, in this world a certain friend got me hyped up pretty much out of nowhere, making me pull the trigger spending some store credit I had.

Metroidvanias are admittedly a dime a dozen these days, and most of them end up drowning in their disappointing mediocrity, so it's refreshing to see one getting it right. The combat is mechanically simple but responsive, the music fits the oppressing nature of the game perfectly and the map design is excellent, rewarding exploration with items, upgrades and shortcuts that make backtracking easier.

What really sets Blasphemous apart the is probably the grotesque take on religious iconography, which frankly might be a turn-off for some; the screenshots on the store page are a good warning, the game has many intense and gory scenes that might upset someone, but if you are fine with that your eyes will be rewarded with some of the finest set of pixel art and animations I've seen in a long while.

Personally I loved almost everything about the game and I'd easily pick it for my top 5 games played in 2019 ^_^