(May 19-May 26)

From the Backlog Reserves

So after last week’s poor choice of games, I decided to break into the part of my backlog that I normally keep under lock and key - games that I am fairly confident will be good, but try to save for a specific occasion.

• Streets of Rogue - I feel as though I am missing something in this game, based on the overwhelming positive reviews it has so on Steam... For whatever reason, this one did not connect with me. Approaching it, I was expecting a classic rogue-like in the vein of Isaac or Nuclear Throne, but somehow it felt empty. Now, this absolutely has to do with the fact that it is still in the early stages of Early Access, but considering the amount of praise it is getting despite this, I was hoping for more. I think for me, the biggest let down was how unrewarding it felt compared to other rogue-likes. In games like Risk of Rain or Don't Starve, you put in hours of work into unlocking a single character, and get that feeling of accomplishment when you succeed... But in Streets of Rogue, I was able to barrel into one of the towns and unlock 3 or 4 characters in a matter of minutes. Which is great for giving the player a new batch of characters to play with, but considering I hadn't even tried out any of the others that were already available, it just didn't feel like I had earned it.
  


• Ghost 1.0 - Just to get this out of the way, because I am kind of a stickler when it comes to this... This isn't really a metroidvania, despite the tags that it has on Steam... Metroidvanias typically have interconnected maps/zones and require copious amounts of backtracking every time you get a new upgrade - platforming to areas that you had previously seen but had no way of accessing at the time (usually for a lot of collectibles). Backtracking does exist in this game (to an extent), but it isn't with new abilities that you return to areas with - it's keycards... Now, this game has plenty of upgrades and abilities, but they are all optional, from all the different types of guns, to even the double jump itself (yes, you can beat the game without a double jump), and honestly, that is what makes this game so genius. It isn't a metroidvania, but it is a hell of a 2d-Platformer-Shooter-RPG (+rogue-like if you pick survival mode).
  
  I played the game through survival mode, partially because it seemed more challenging, and partly because... well, there were more achievements to earn through that mode (don't judge...), and I had a blast with it. The game itself was extremely balanced too, so that the more alarms you survived (and rewards you earned), the more difficult the game became. Then, if/when you died, all of the alarms would reset back to 0, while also stripping you of everything you had (except for 3 random upgrades left on your corpse). This risk versus reward kept me in check for a good portion of the game, but there was definitely more than one occasion where the greed overtook me, causing devastation as I lost amazing arsenals (I miss you penguin gun!!!)... And what makes the game so great, is that the rewards you get from those alarms is random... On on life, you could get a beam gun and a mine launcher as your secondaries, while the next life, you get a penguin gun and a machine gun, with all sorts of different upgrades to boost your character (shields, poison touch, faster fire rate, drones, damage, etc..)
  
  The one, and only real downside I had with the game was a completely optional late-game mission (there was even a context item that said it could be skipped)... It felt incredibly slow, and somewhat ruined the pace an otherwise amazing experience.
  


• Ori and the Blind Forest - (ˢᵗᵉᵃᵐᵍᶦᶠᵗˢ ᵂᶦᶰ) - So this is... Kind of an SG win. I won the original, but beat the DE. Though, I did play through the first hour or so of the original game, just so I could see how the game changed from one version to the next, and it was definite improvement. It ran smoother, didn't have screen tearing, and most importantly, it didn't reward 3 random achievements every time I launched the game... Seriously, how does that happen?
  
  There probably isn't much I could say about this game that hasn't already been said a thousand times - It's very visually appealing and has a great soundtrack. The story, however, I didn't see as being as emotional as so many people claim. That's not saying it was bad, but I definitely see that part of the game as being overstated. On the gameplay side, it was a lot of fun. It was just the right amount of challenge (played on hard), so that I never felt overwhelmed by anything. Even the secret collectibles were right where they needed to be in terms of difficulty to reach... The one thing that did kind of get to me, though, was the save feature, which was more of a mental thing than anything else, due to it flying in the face of the way I'm used to playing games. Being able to save so frequently, it almost made me feel like I was "save-scumming" every time I dropped a save anywhere near a previous one. Outside of that personal issue though, I would say the game deserves all of the high marks that it has gotten over the years. I would have loved a proper boss fight or two thrown in, but what they substitute at the end of each zone definitely fits the style of the game as well.