Amitte

Progress report: April ‘22 (a.k.a. What… Do I Talk About…)

Yeeeah… maybe it’s because I just had a big dinner about an hour ago, but I really don’t know what to say about this past month.

No, wait! I saw Turning Red at the cinema and it was absolutely awesome! It’s not often that I stumble upon a movie with a protagonist I can look at as if they’re a mirror into my past. So, if I were to take that into account, I’d say last month was good :)

On to the assassinations!

Fractured Minds - This game supposedly explores “anxiety and mental health issues”; I’ve played it twice by now and I can’t tell if I agree with that. It’s just a small handful of different, seemingly anxiety-inducing vignettes… I’m glad the profits are being openly and equally distributed between the dev’s funds for the future and charities supporting mental health awareness, but for its price, this game is a really hard sell.

Hector: Badge of Carnage - Episode 1 - Rude, crude, likely not for a lot of people. Maybe it’s because of the visual presentation and Telltale’s name, but I think I like this one marginally better than Supreme League of Patriots. Still, off with this series ‘till next year!

Matraquinha PAIR - A simple, yet well done game where your objective is to match one of 2-4 objects shown on one side of the screen with an outline on the other side. Realistically anyone past the age of 3 would be bored with this, but hey, I made the decision to buy it.

My Coloring Book: Food and Beverage - As basic as a coloring game could get. Recommend turning off sound if you’re not a fan of generic BGM and weird mouth noises happening each time you color something in.

The Henry Stickmin Collection - The classic Flash game series is back, now in one big package! I may have never been a Newgrounds kid, but the Henry Stickmin games have still been part of my childhood. I’ve always loved how effortlessly funny and filled to the brim with references all of the games have been, with the newest one, Completing the Mission, certainly not lagging behind. It’s a shame to know that was the last of Henry, but nevertheless, memories of the franchise have made my days for years, with things like Charles’ “greatest plan” or the way that one guard says “Look at how much I care. I don’t care.”; seriously, those things live rent-free in my head. Thank you for everything, PuffballsUnited, and I hope we can meet again whenever you make something new.

Twin Mirror - I’ve been excited about getting to try this one out, since it’s another DONTNOD game. The problem, however… is that this game is a whole lotta nothin’. I’ve read online that it was meant to be another episodic title (which I’m pretty sure everybody would have expected from the studio at this point), but then that idea got scrapped and the game became what it is now… so the character development, lore, main plotline, it all seems like it’s only the first episode by the time the game wraps up. To add insult to injury, it feels like whatever was left of the budget went into getting the rights to Pac-Man. Through Life is Strange, you could tell the devs had an affinity to all kinds of media that was being referenced; here, it just feels soulless… or maybe, on the contrary, it’s the most soulful thing of all, precisely because it’s a thing of its own. My biggest personal gripe with this game is that we don’t get to learn nearly enough about Sam’s issues (How did he start experiencing panic attacks? Is he an aspie? As an aspie myself, I noticed a few things that made me want to “claim” him, but it’s kinda shaky and I don’t know if it would have made sense in the long run) as well as his double (Why/How has he been a part of Sam for so long? Is he a direct suggestion of what Sam would have been like, had he been more empathetic while going through life in general, or potentially a separate entity? If I were to believe Sam is an aspie, could he be a contradiction to that mindset?). Also, one of the, let’s call them, >this is totally what having a panic attack is like< minigames is really unintuitive, screw it. Also also, the name “Mind Palace” totally clashes with the one from Detroit: Become Human and I can’t believe we’re not talking about it. Also also also, I don’t know what I’m gonna be doing from here on out… guess I’ve gotta go back to being on the lookout for LiS 2 deals.

Yesterday - I only went out of my way to buy this game because Yesterday Origins has quickly become one of those resident cheap games, both physically and digitally, and I own it on two platforms already… might as well play the prequel first, right? Well… just about everything in the way it’s presented (due to being originally made for mobile devices) instantly made me speed through it with a walkthrough. It’s short, the character models are detailed, but look oddly ugly when talking, just about every conversation they have feels like a massive infodump… I retained none of the story this game was trying to tell. I watched one ending and couldn’t be bothered to check out the other ones. Now I’m not feeling so hot about the sequel…

Without Romance - A short story about a girl and a guy from two different worlds. Had some potential, but in the end it went nowhere.

Without Within 3 - Vinty and totally-not Excelia, back on another track! After having gotten acquainted with Excelia in the last game, this time Vinty gets flown out to Singapore, to help her with the search for a mysterious, should-have-been-dead calligrapher. Once more, the real locations adapted into the game were described in detail and had short video clips attached. As they say, though, “all good things must come to an end”… and so did this franchise, for me. Even though this installment focused on another character, somewhere deep inside I’ll still miss you, Vinity!

See you next month! :)

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