So much for 2020 so far

My first and only post in 2020 was about how i wanted to do more gaming. And here now three months later I managed to finish the astounding amount of … um …. four games. Of which two have been played before already and just had an update or DLC. And I spend a lot of screaming because of those games as they reminded once again that caring for achievements is suffering. Since I’m suffering anyway I think it is appropriate to be a member of the church of Madokami. Enough off-topic. Here the games:

• Tokyo Xanadu eX+
  

  105 hours playtime

  55 of 55 achievements

• Gal*Gun 2
  

  23 hours playtime

  37 of 37 achievements

• Black Mesa
  

  49 hours playtime

  50 of 50 achievements

• Heroes of Hammerwatch
  

  422 hours playtime

  114 of 114 achievements

Tokyo Xanadu eX+: I think my plan to play more games started to crumble right from the beginning by chosing a game which takes dozen of hours to be completed. Tokyo Xanadu despite serving typical jrpgs clichés has a lot going for it. The story starts with the protagonist Kou witnissing by chance a strange occurence of his classmate Asuka and a supernatural phanomen called the Xanadu. From there on he keeps budding his nose into everything, helping out about everyone just like people normally do in their everyday life. In a rough similarity to Persona the game is split into different sections: the social aspect and school life versus dungeon crawling. The game is separated in different chapters each covering mostly one-closed-story encounter usually ending with increasing your character roster. Most characters are likeably and have small changes in how the play. Per chapter you have about one or two main dungeon, one or two bonus dungeon (depending if Ng+ or not) and lots of text.
The story is presented well. Despite the chapters covering only a certain incidents, upcoming chapters and characters are introduced early on, gradually building the world. World-building itself is done well as nearly every single npc has a story to tell splitted over the seven chapters ranging from a shopkeepers search for a marriage partner, children finding new friends or a child going through his rebellious phase. The same goes for the playable characters. Only sad part is that in the first run you can’t do all social events as they are limited per chapter. This limitation is removed at least for New Game +. Game has also typical a normal and a true ending and I have to say that I enjoy the final battle for the true end due to some minor trick setting in half-way in the fight. After this you have the after story making the story more complicated again.
Dungeon crawling is solved very well for the most part as most dungeons can be completed in about 15-20 minutes, not overwelcoming their stay. But you have many of them and replay them if you go for achievements.
Like said earlier, the characters are likeable and engage well with each other. Only “downside” some might consider is that the main character is oblivious to romance to a point that is ridiculous considering what he does for just one person. A bit more courage from the developers would have been welcome.
Achievement-wise there is a lot of grinding but most stuff is rather fair. Most annoying stuff is to complete the game on the highest difficulty (which you should do on the first run) making bosses sponges, then replaying the whole game with another difficulty setting and also for finding chests in the bonus dungeon which are only there in New Game+. However, the most annoying achievement is to get every friend information for which again you need NG+ because of the limited social events in first run. Also, as every npc has a friend page, you need to talk to them each chapter, multiple times. And in rare cases you need to speak twice to them because it will change after first talk, but not for all of them. So you speak to 50+ characters twice per chapter ….. mutliple times …..

Gal*Gun 2: Gal*Gun is the story about your typical averge japanese male school student getting entangled in a war between angels and demons with the consequence of being the most popular boy in the school chased down by all the girls. Your only means of defense? Shooting them with a pheromone gun making them orgasm OR stripping them with the second whirlwind function. So basically an autobiography of my life. The game is a follow up to the VR version and it shows. The rail-shooter mechanic from Double Peace has been replaced with a stand in one-place defend and then move on mechanic. Which is a downgrade in my opinion. Also from the new love interests I didn’t particularly care for one, there is romantic route for the angel and the demon. And you can’t route for specific girls like in Double Peace, also all girls information have been removed despite being the same school. So in a lot of ways it is a downgrade from Double Peace which is a shame. The game is still silly and enjoyable but I hoped for more because the rail-shooting in Double Peace was strong. What got better? You have slightly better resolution and can invite girls to specific locations and creep shotting the shit out of them. If that is your thing.
Achievement-wise it is pretty straight-forward. Get every route, get all upgrades, nothing to hard, just time intensive.

Black Mesa: 15 years and it is finally done. Last few months the final chapters for Xen have been added. I think I played Half-Life for PS2 way back and certain minor elements seemed familiar. But a lot of stuff was more or less new to me. The game is overall good. The story is enjoyable, the level design is good. The earth-level are strong despite some overstaying their welcome. Then comes Xen. Visually a blast, Xen and Gonarch’s Lair are awesome to play (unless you chose to suffer). Interloper is a bit on the long side but still bearable.
So …. achievements. There are a lot of creative achievements, wordplays and unusual trigger conditions. And then there are carry achievements which ruin the whole experience if you do them. So back in 2016 there was this hidden hat achievement for bringing it to the teleporter to Xen. You had to constantly place it down, fight, pick it up and carry it further while avoiding the hat clipping with ladders and what not, disappering for ever. So what ingenious idea had the developers? Making your carry the hat to the endgame. My idea? Starting the game and keep playing from where I left on, portal to Xen. However, first shock. Saves are incompatible. So I had to do the hat run from the beginning. So one hat run from start to endgame. And because this wasn’t fun enough the developers decided to add a pizza box which had to be carried from Questionably Ethics (three fourth into earth levels) to ….. endgame. So you either do two runs, ruining both or ….. you ruin one run experience completely by juggling both items constantly running back and forth, picking up and dropping items. And because THIS wasn’t still not fun enough for the first part of Xen you have yet ANOTHER item to carry. And there are many points of no-return which were simply not designed for carrying multiple objects. Frankly the game wasn’t designed for even one item. WHY DO THREE? I know this is an homage to Episode 2 and the Gnome. I know I have chosen this pain willingly. But it is still excessive and disrespectful towards your customers. The only item which I appreciate is the third, a gas canister, because it opens up a new route and slightly changes how the game flows.
This means my first run has been miserable for a lot of time and sections taking 15 minutes took hours. Replaying the game afterwards with just one item (because at one point you can’t carry both anymore or just with extreme game breaking) was a lot more enjoyable and the game is strong that way. The game does a lot of things right, it is a good game. But this shows how something minor can ruin experiences, even if I am to blame partly for this.

Heroes of Hammerwatch: I think I have made posts about the game in the past and if you are interested just check them. This time I’m here for more ranting concerning the latest DLC the “Moon Temple”. It adds a new dungeon which is for the most part interesting, adds new bosses, is quite challenging (due to being low on item-side) but is quite tedious sometimes due to a room structure where you can only advance if killing all enemies in a room. This makes the temple far slower than the other two dungeons, also because it has more spongy enemies.
So why am I ranting? Because of the Mercenary Mode, the second addition of the new DLC. Basic idea is that you can create your own character completely with skill set from the scratch out of nearly all skills in the game. Your own superhero. The downside? Perma-Death. Make three runs, die in the fourth. All gone. The problem? Achievements. You need to reach General Rank for the last achievement which means you have to bring your mercenary up through six different runs including not only the rather easy Forsaken Tower but also the harder dungeons. And playing this way I noticed how cheap the game is in a lot of instances. Normal game you don’t notice since you have many overpowered side-effects gained by grinding. All of these are nullified for Mercenary Mode. Hardest offender for being cheap is the Desert Dungeon. Enemies can trigger directly below you, sandstorms can pressure you into enemy hordes and traps (also part of other dungeons) instantly kill you despite having full health, revive potions, damage negating and and and. This is the only trap in the whole game which does this. Seems odd to single it out. Honestly, introducing a perma-death this late into a games life-cycle AND tying it two achievements is kind of a dick move. These achievements are actual achievements but it makes you realize how cheap the game can be sometimes.

Well, this is it for now. Maybe now I can finally get to Resident Evil :P Or back to minimize the Shadow Backlog. Have fun hunting and stay healthy.