Just a nice quick remaster from an era where game mechanics were unpolished (and sometimes incoherent), but were often heaps more charming because of it

For the unfamiliar, Destroy All Humans is probably closest to something like GTA, except with about 5 separated areas instead of one giant one. It's more angled towards the "cause chaos until the cops come" side, as just your presence already causes panic (you're an alien after all). There's some mind control and disguise powers to avoid this happening, which are fun to play with. Otherwise it's your expected third-person vaporising and anal-probing, or mass destruction in your saucer

Like other open-worlds, the main story is a narrative draped over these mechanics, providing interesting challenges - or ideas for your own chaos when you eventually get back to free-roaming

Good palette cleanser before the new month starts

The basic conceit of Moon Hunters is a rogue-like (optionally co-op) game, where each run is framed as the telling of the legend of your character(s). At the end of a run, your character and their story will be assigned to a constellation that fits, effectively immortalising them in the stars

Mechanically, Moon Hunters is a top-down action game, and each run has many of the elements you'd expect from a rogue-like: randomised areas, enemies, upgrades, events, etc. Most of the moment to moment gameplay is simple enemy elimination while you clean a map of all its goodies, which is worthwhile if you have a friend or two around and maybe get a bit tipsy, but doesn't hold up in more long-form solo sessions. The first four character classes are familiar feeling archetypes, but the other (unlockable) ones are more creative in their design. The upgrades are mostly bland numerical extensions though, so you and your buddy's Spellswords will basically feel the same

Narratively, each run follows the same template: the Moon God has gone missing, and you are tasked with finding out why. The Sun Cult is rising in power - awfully coincidental - and so you have limited days to complete your mission. Each day you choose an area to go to, in the hopes that it will provide some clues to the Goddess's location. Every run ends with a confrontation with the Sun King, who you can defeat regardless, so what matters most is what you get up to along the way

The character traits and events system is probably the most unique selling point here. As you explore areas and engage in these events, your character develops traits that may help or hinder with future events. These events and traits will form the bulk of your celestial write-up at the end of the run. You also improve character attributes with your choices, but these are rarely used as checks - primarily they increase stats, like damage and health

There's a few interesting ideas in Moon Hunters, but they don't seem to be explored that much. The game is also dragged down by rough enemy and map design, that eventually made each run feel like a chore. Rather play it with some friends on a relaxed afternoon..

What do i even say about this ages old game?

It's definitely interesting to see all the Bioware quirks traced back to their roots here, and there's a certain old-school charm to the whole thing, but yeah.. you can feel the age on this one.. and 2nd edition D&D is not helping things. Perhaps i've just been spoiled by modern games, but i found myself getting irritated at all the clunky character management and world interactions - rough edges that have been smoothed out in more recent genre releases

As a side note, i'm quite glad we seem to have moved away from real-time-with-pause, like, as a society. As much as i enjoyed Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny, i'm still so puzzled why that became the digital mode for this genre for so long - table-top RPGs are essentially turn-based already, so i don't know how it took us until Larian arrived to realise that it would be a better fit for the digital versions

I'm probably being unfair though, and i should rather judge the game on it's own merits. I will say, i did enjoy the narrative quite a bit. Also, low-level adventuring is not something you see that often in games (or not like this at least), so i appreciated the stakes starting literally at "kill the rats in the cellar", and only very slowly cranking up from there. Combined with that, the narrative freedom of "go out and forge whatever path", while still leaving a few threads to follow up on is a style that always works well with games

And yeah, as much as i say i didn't enjoy the endless inventory management, eating an edible and zoning out on it (and the story and setting) was quite a good time

Tower Fortress took a while to grow on me. I found it frustratingly stiff for the longest time, and struggled to make it past even the first area. By the end though, i'd gained enough skill to beat the third area (last thing i needed to call it done), and got a few pixels away from beating the final boss

The closest reference point would probably be Downwell, but we're moving upwards. You can double-jump and fire your gun as you climb; find weapon chests for some limited ammo variety; and choose a random upgrade at the end of each level (if you've earned it). The main character is modelled after Samus Aran, so the second jump is a like her screw attack, damaging enemies on contact

I think it was this "spin attack" that messed me up at the start. Rather than headbutting everything on my way up the tower as i expected, it's actually more useful to shoot things. This means that the game is more about getting to the side of enemies - it's often hard to move back down, so enemies you've missed are usually forfeit

Once i got into the rhythm of "move up but sideways then shoot", as well as some muscle memory for the level layout, things started to click together, and i could reliably make it to the third area. After that, i just had to work on some trick achievements - and i squeezed this in just before month end

Resident Evil 7 is both a reinvention of the franchise, and a return to form… or so i've heard, since the only RE game i've played before this is 5. I'm very familiar with the other games, but only in theoretical study, rather than any hands-on experience

Environmentally, we've scaled all the way back down from globe-trotting corporate conspiracy, to a more intimate, domestic horror. The setting is just a family home in the swamps of Louisiana, and Ethan (the player character) explores the house in old-school RE style, with puzzle doors and shadow plinths. The family living there has been corrupted by a loose bioweapon, and each member seems to have their own themed area of the house and boss fight(s)

The reinvention comes mostly from the perspective change, which is now first-person, and the game makes sure to never cut away from that until the very end - even in cutscenes. This amplifies the claustrophobic terror quite well, but not as much as Alien: Isolation (thank the lord). Since Resident Evil has always been a game with guns, this transition is pretty seamless as well

Guns and ammo - resources in general - and inventory space are also back to being limited, which is a classic technique for adding that low hum of anxiety all the way through. You'll spend a lot of time scrounging for ammo and meds (or scraps to craft them), and then short sharp bursts of tense action when the monsters jump out

I enjoyed my time a lot here. Technically, by my personal rules, this one isn't beaten (yet), but since i finished the main campaign i thought i should write it up anyway. Once i get round to buying the DLC, maybe we'll see about a proper beating

Real-time tactics/strategy is probably my least favourite game genre - i think because my brain works at a more turn-based speed (at least for strategy). I do like stealth games though, and mixing that in smoothed out the RTS to help it go down, as well as let me appreciate the genre a bit more

You play as (up to) five different characters, depending on the mission, each with their own tools for stealthy action. Characters (and their combinations) are introduced at a good pace, giving you time to toy around with them and the way they interact. The tools themselves are a nice mix of unique and overlapping abilities, which means you can lean on your favourite for most tasks, but will have to bring in the specialist every now and then

The view is top down isometric-ish (full rotation), so levels appear as a diorama, with an almost puzzle-box feel. They're intricately detailed, with various tasks to achieve, and multiple possible routes to success. The first few minutes of each mission was spent examining the area, planning a general route of attack, which often had to be adjusted and re-planned once i started executing it. I enjoyed this brain exercise, but found i couldn't maintain it for very long. A single mission was usually a good size before i felt the cooling fans start to struggle - a good snack break solves a lot though

Narratively, it's mostly what i'd expected: classic war-time espionage, following a team of dubious-but-loyal individuals, but this time in feudal Japan. A lot of time is spent with this team, which ends up being its strongest hook (like any good heist movie), but that left the overarching narrative feeling a bit straightforward. Having the team be the centre is to its advantage though, as that ties back to the characters (mechanically speaking) being the centre of the gameplay

I played this on Steam Deck, with the controller, and it was surprisingly intuitive and responsive. You control each character manually with the left-stick, which is a slight disadvantage because you can't queue up quick commands with the mouse, but you do have a "shadow mode" which lets you set up simultaneous actions. Perhaps this fact, combined with the slower pace of stealth, made the real-time skew more towards my preferred turn-based speed

This is the first game i've played from Mimimi (RIP in peace), but i've wishlisted Desperados 3 and Shadow Gambit, and i'm very interested to see how they evolve this formula going forward

I try to work through my backlog in chronological order, but there's a few games that technically have a more recent release date, while actually being re-releases of games that came out much earlier. I've applied this exception for the Yakuza games, and now for the Castlevania Advance Collection, which is a collection of Castlevania games that came out on the Gameboy Advance - four of them, to be exact, although i only played three

Circle of the Moon was the hardest of the three, and took the longest for me to complete, but was surprisingly good. It follows the metroidvania design (or the design follows it ?) with a sprawling castle that incrementally unlocks as you obtain different traversal abilities. What surprised me the most was how much the game felt like Dark Souls (the first one). There's the obvious comparisons - overall difficulty; animation commitment; save rooms like bonfires - but the strongest resonance for me was the cautious feeling of exploring a new area; venturing out into an unknown, hostile world, not knowing what's around the corner, and how far you can push before having to turn back and save your progress. Good stuff

Harmony of Dissonance was my least favourite. The art style was a bit weird to me, some of the abilities felt a bit off - even exploring the castle ended up being mildly irritating. While the castle layout is perfectly fine, for some reason there's two castles that you can swap between at teleport rooms, each entirely separate in terms of exploration, although identical in structure. There's very few points where this mechanic is used interestingly; for the most part i just found it annoying to traipse across the map to a remote corner to search for upgrades, and then immediately have to return to do it again. Enemies and palette will change, but that's it. Otherwise, it's classic metroidvania, but easier than Circle of the Moon

Aria of Sorrow is (arguably) the best one, and judging by the achievement stats, the one that people are buying the collection to play. It's similar in a lot of ways to Circle of the Moon, but where that game had the classic Castlevania secondary weapons powered by hearts, as well as a magic system powered by MP with spells dropped by enemies, Aria folds those into each other for a smoother system: hearts are just MP now, and spells are cast by the same "up + B" as using support weapons. Spells (or souls) are also dropped by enemies, and are the primary system on show, supplying you with everything from combat moves to traversal abilities. The weapons catalogue has also been opened up - now you can equip more than just a whip (however iconic it may be). Armour and accessories are also expanded, making it feel even more like Dark Souls - not with the same difficulty though; that's still toned down from Circle

It feels weird to call these games "metroidvanias", as they're partially responsible for the genre even existing. They're still following on after Symphony of the Night's design (and success), and then there's the whole Metroid part of the equation, but whatever they are, they're very good - especially for playing on a handheld