Report 42: Bad games not allowed?
I kinda noticed that so far all the games I’ve beaten in 2021 were good (I was done with Runefall back in 2020). I wonder if I can keep this up for the whole year (but I really, really doubt it).
Death Stranding is a long-distance travelling/delivery simulator with occassional action elements from Hideo Kojima. Did it turn out to be overhyped? Hell yeah. Is it bad? Not at all.
The main part with delivering requires a special kind of mood and patience while travelling through rocky terrains and mountains. You gradually get more tools and structures to work with, and as soon as you get to build ziplines, the delivery part is as good as broken (you’re probably gonna get tired from it anyway at some point. The snowy mountains part almost made me put it onhold, but then I tried to rely on ziplines more - turned out it’s pretty much the only good way to navigate through that area).
This game has an asynchronous multiplayer with other players signs’, structures and vehicles showing up in your world. This doesn’t feel that unique, though it’s a neat way to further incorporate an idea of connections and helping each other.
The action part is… okay. It’s there and it’s decent. You won’t exactly be bravely plunging into action most of the time, and when you are, the combat tends to be somewhat short - if you’re dragging it out too much, chances are you’re going to lose. There are plot segments that are combat-only, and it’s a nice change of pace.
The weakest part of the game, sadly, has to be the plot - at least for me. I don’t think the infodumpy way of storytelling works well with the plot like that, and it barely catched my interest most of the time. The ending parts were somewhat nice at times, but boy, does this plot overstays its’ welcome. This game has climaxes after climaxes, and I was REALLY starting to get tired by the end of it. The plot isn’t really bad, it just feels needlessly convoluted and uninteresting most of the time for me. The main antagonist face-off and epilogue part were pretty good tho.
Oh yeah, another minor complaint is having no music player function during travels. Why? That should’ve been a no-brainer.
The actors were all good, Mads is great as ever, Troy Baker was a very enjoyable villain, Reedus… does the usual Reedus.
Overall, a very unusual game that barely feels like one sometimes. It definitely isn’t that well thought-through as a game for everyone to enjoy, and really seems like some sort of experiment (and it is). Has some obvious cons, but there’s still stuff to appreciate about it.
I finally stopped being a little bitch about this one and actually played through it. Pyrocynical did a 2h review of it, and for some reason there’s nothing that I love more than watching the reviews after I’m done with games being reviewed, so it was a perfect reason to finally pick it up.
The only thing that stopped me before was the jumpscare right at the beginning of the game, and it’s a shame, really - almost neither of any other jumpscares this game has (and boy does it have many of those) turned out to be as scary as I thought they would. Being a fan of horror themes and having a (mild, but still) heart condition is pure suffering.
Oh right, about the game. This is clearly a product made with love and care, and it does so much with very little (the engine isn’t exactly AAA-game-tier fuel). The graphics should clearly feel outdated, but it only adds to the creepiness factor instead. The sound design is AMAZING. All this stuff easily makes you feel paranoid and disturbed.
The game was greatly inspired by horror classics, most prominently Silent Hill series, and it usually takes the best from them.
The plot is fairly simple when you get the full picture, but it still has a good (and fairly depressing) impact on you. There are 4 ending, and neither of these can be called objectively “good” (in the vein of “and they lived happily ever after”, I didn’t mean to sound they suck, quite the opposite).
If I had to point something negative about it, it feels very clunky - sometimes with shooting and pretty much every time with platforming or jumping through windows and stuff. There’s also an awful part in the middle of the game where you have to backtrack a lot (and boy do I mean A LOT), and it’s confusing enough on its’ own, but imagine having a terrible sense of direction on top of that - and you’ll have an hour or so of “where the fuck do I go”.
Overall, I consider this a real horror cult classic with its share of flaws, but the flaws here are overshadowed by the sheer fact of how much effort was put in this thing by a small group of devs.
This is a super fun side-scrolling shoot’em’up homage to anime mecha genre (the oldschool kind anyway, Mazinger kind of stuff).
You fly through very short bullet hell stages combining your robot with other pilots’ modules to get a different firing effect and special attack. Nothing too fancy, but it works pretty damn good and it’s really fun.
This game is also pretty damn hard and challenging, but never cheap or unfair. You can get your robot and modules somewhat repaired between the levels, but if your HP hits 0 during one, that’s it. Same for the modules - if they get destroyed, you can’t use them in later levels. This sounds tough, but the game is REALLY short for me to be even slightly annoyed with losing, which is pretty rare.
Overall, good old fun. I’ll DEFINITELY play more and try to beat it on higher difficulty levels.
This game felt like it was almost breaking my only-good-games-in-2021-streak by being pretty mediocre, but I guessed it’s mostly my fault for playing almost everything Alien Shooter franchise has to offer. I mean, these games definitely do NOT try hard in the slightest, but it’s not like being innovative made a difference in the past. Alien Shooter 2 brought very light RPG elements to the table, and a ton of weapons’ variations, and it still felt pointless most of the time.
Anyway, Conscription is uhh… a short expansion pack? for the second title. The gameplay and the story were as braindead as usual, but really, who cares about the plot in the game that’s literally called Alien Shooter? I feel dumb even mentioning the plot, like it actually bothers me.
All that talk about “mediocre” and “as usual”, but there were still some new things sprinkled here and there. I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to recognise a new weapon here since there’s so many, but I’m pretty sure that’s the first time the game featured human enemies, which was a surprise.
The game is really short, took me about a hour and a half to get through. It’s also was pretty easy, at least on normal difficulty.
On the technical level, it’s pretty janky to look at, especially when there are many enemies on screen.
Overall, it’s mostly your usual Alien Shooter game. You’ll know what to expect if you played one (besides the TD one, obviously).
Backlog progress status:
Thanks for the reviews. I downloaded Cry of Fear a long time ago because it looked interesting, but I never did play it. It’s worth mentioning in your write-up that the game is FREE. =)
Oh yeah, I kinda forgot about that, since I’ve added the game to my account waaaaaaaaaay back and forgot about it being free. It really makes you appreciate the efforts put into it even more.